A Light of Darkness
by Auset's Tears
Summary: When Sauron falls, Rakhan the Uruk-hai flees the world, finding unlikely refuge in dangerous forest. As a lifelong slave of darkness, freedom is both terrifying and beautiful to the renegade warrior. He wants nothing more than to forget the outside world, until a shocking discovery brings Rakhan face to face with his violent past, and offers him a future beyond his imagining.
1. Chapter 1

There was nothing to do but run.

Run screaming until his throat burned; run deaf from the howls of ten thousand orcs and Uruk-hai and trolls, and the earth-shaking screech of the defeated spirit of Sauron; run senseless as the dominating force that had guided his actions shattered into a thousand splinters then hissed out of existence. It was only his instinct to run that saved him as the ground broke away before the Black Gate and countless numbers were swallowed whole. Those that had died this way, going into the cold empty void with their Lord, did not know the suffering caused by His absence. Those who remained were in a hell of their own: formidable warriors became as helpless as blinded witless animals, and the white-faces made quick work of them. A river of black blood poured into the chasm that had opened before the gate, as the Westerners sought to extinguish the dark flame of orc-life once and for all.

Rakhan had run, fleeing his enemies for the first time in his life. Half-senseless, he knew nothing of direction or goal as he shoved others aside and clawed his way up the mountains. The screeching of Sauron penetrated every ounce of his being, but unlike the full bloods he ran away from the fiery lights exploding off Barad-Dur. Rakhan pounded north, running away from the horror of defeat even though he couldn't escape the violent sundering of his consciousness. For the first time since he had escaped the pit of his birth, Rakhan was a masterless creature, and it was terrifying for the senseless Uruk-hai warrior.

He first came into something like awareness slogging through the Dead Marshes. Not even an Uruk-hai would cross the Marshes, a haunted place of agonized spirits whose only desire was to pull the living down into the frigid, corpse-filled water. Rakhan woke from the nightmare of defeat to find himself splashing the foul water at his parched lips, face to face with a long-dead man wearing a dome-shaped golden helmet. His pale yellow hair floated around his face, grasping like a weed. His eyes were hollow, void, empty, but as Rakhan grappled with his almost infantile senses a slow, fey light began to burn in the dead man's gaze.

Rakhan leaped away, gasping in terror. It was a new feeling for the Uruk: Saruman had not bred soldiers to feel fear or pain. What use did slaves have for those emotions, which served to warn the body of danger? Now, free of Saruman and the Dark Lord's overriding consciousness, Rakhan felt the fear like a bucket of frigid Anduin water poured down his back. Wild with sudden, unfamiliar fear, Rakhan stumbled backwards, catching himself just before he fell into another death-filled pool. His instinct was to run again, to put as much distance as he could between himself and the rising ghouls of the marsh. But as Rakhan's wild pale green eyes swept the land he understood—his first clear thought—that to run blindly would ensure his death. For the first time in Rakhan's short life he understood that he didn't want to die; all that was promised to him on death was the sucking of his soul into the nothingness of the void.

And so he would have to pick his way carefully through the marsh. There was land enough, Rakhan saw that clearly now. Faint strings of land wove through the water, hedged in by yellowing sedge grasses. It was slow going, leaving plenty of time for Rakhan to think of the lost battle. He knew without doubt that Sauron was vanquished. Saruman was a little less clear. Rakhan could sense the stirrings of his former master's consciousness, but it was somehow greatly reduced, like the faint sound of wind in a far-off tree. There would be no going back to Saruman, no comfort of his master's guidance, even though Rakhan had never known a life where he wasn't bound to serve another being's will.

As odd as it was to be so alone, Rakhan realized it was a good thing, if he could avoid enemies. If the frenzy of defeat and terror and mindlessness meant anything, then there would be no fellow Uruk-hai to link with anyway. There was certainly no safety in numbers. Rakhan had paid enough attention to know who Elessar was. The King of Gondor had returned and whatever numbers of Rakhan's kind that remained, whoever had survived the shrieking emptiness of Sauron's fall, would now surely be hunted to death. It would be safer, Rakhan thought, to disappear entirely, to find some hidden place where he could endure the catastrophy alone. Rakhan had been fortunate enough not to discard his weapons in the frenzy. He could hunt, he could find water; he could live on. He needed to more than that, he thought.

He followed the Anduin, sleeping little, staying as hidden as possible. On his third day of travel Rakhan spotted a brigade of men, from Gondor by their armor and standards, heading south to Minas Tirith for their triumph. Rakhan hurried through the forests of Amun Hen, the thundering of Rauros in his ears. Here Rakhan took his time, hunting deer and saving his strength. Soon the Gap of Rohan would unfold before him, and Rakhan planned to run it all the way, day and night without rest or food. The whip of his master would not lick his heels or his heart, but the strength and discipline that Saruman had bred into him was Rakhan's to keep.

Fortunately the horse-boys were nowhere in sight. Likely they were celebrating in Gondor. Rakhan ran until his body ached and his lungs were ready to explode, but he crossed the sea of grass and rock. He had never considered pain before; now it overwhelmed him. How easy it would be to quit, when it didn't mean instant death! Yet if he fell under the pale glaring sun, men would soon enough find him. After the first full day and night, it took every bit of strength Rakhan had to keep going. But soon enough, the forbidden forest of Fangorn rose before him, a shimmering haven of green darkness and silence.

No one—orc or man or elf—entered Fangorn forest, and if there was anywhere in Middle Earth where a defeated and masterless Uruk-hai could live free and alone, Rakhan determined that Fangorn was it. He had heard rumors from some of the other groups of Helm's Deep survivors, Uruks like Rakhan who had joined Sauron after Saruman's imprisonment at the frighteningly destroyed Isengard; but nothing certain, as none of the Uruk-hai who had retreated through the trees had returned. There had been talk among his people of a dark evil in the woods, but surely whatever lurked in the cool green shadow had less of a reason to kill Rakhan than Aragorn Elessar and his minions. Shuddering with exhaustion and pain, Rakhan ran into the forest and fell to his knees by a cold, gurgling stream. Whatever harm the forest meant him would have to be faced now; Rakhan couldn't go on. Helpless, Rakhan lay down on the mossy floor and passed into a dreamless sleep.

The next morning Rakhan realized that he would hardly live alone. For a long while he lay on his back staring up at the thick canopy of leaves, watching brilliantly colored birds flitter through the trees. The creatures of the forest were wary of him, much more than they would be of a man, but the longer Rakhan lay still the closer they came as they went about their business. Squirrels and rabbits strayed closer, seeking nuts and edible plants. Two brightly colored foxes, a mother and her kit, slinked to the stream and drank, their green eyes bright on the prostrate Uruk-hai. Rakhan didn't understand what he was feeling. The urge to kill had been his overriding emotion before, surpressing anything else he might have felt. He would have seen other creatures as nothing more than a source of food. The only amusement they would have provided him would have been in their death, in the manner of it, if it was slow and he could watch the terror and the spark of life as if vanished, if he could put a torture of iron to its flesh for his pitiful pleasure. But now Rakhan found himself idly watching, noting the playfulness of the kit as it trotted behind its mother, and the mother's scolding concern as she hurried the baby back into the curious vale of trees, hanging mosses, vines, and ferns. Rakhan listened to the varied calls of the birds, finding that when he closed his eyes he could distinguish the notes better, he could determine where the strangely intriguing melodies came from. From somewhere deeper in the forest there was a low moaning, almost a humming sound, made by no creature Rakhan could identify. Curiosity drove him back to his feet. His sword was at his side and his bow and quiver—the obscenely powerful bow of Saruman's invention with its massive black arrows—were on his back, but Rakhan felt no compulsion to hunt yet. He wandered deeper into Fangorn as if under a charm or spell, not understanding that he was, for the first time, experiencing life freed from the dark magic that had utterly dominated him.

As night fell Rakhan made his bed in the gulch left behind by a fallen tree, but he could hardly sleep. He was faintly hungry, having had only some of the dried venison from a kill near Amon Hen, but he was too amazed by the world around him to sleep. His sharp Uruk eyes watched boldly patterned spiders pick their way along the upturned roots of the fallen tree. Bats had taken over for the birds, thousands of tiny Nazgul on their winged steeds, swooping down on centipedes and singing crickets. And the moaning, the humming, was loud enough to vibrate the deliciously cool ground he lay in. It was some living thing, Rakhan decided, but he didn't know where the source was coming from. At once it was close, but also far far away, and once it seemed to be right above him. Rakhan wasn't frightened of this. His brief experience with fear had been an immediate, imminent threat; also, it was a man's curse to be afraid of the unknown. Rakhan didn't know it, but it was his own energy that kept him safe; he meant the forest no harm and it knew, and the strange life of Fangorn Forest reported this in low whispers and slow, deep song throughout the night. Rakhan studied his own breath as it lulled into the rhythm of the life around him. He was a part of the forest that night, and though it was all entrancingly new and exciting, somehow it felt perfectly right of Rakhan.

By day he plunged deeper still, exploring, tasting. Fangorn allowed him a deer every other day, generous even for his tall, greedy, thickly muscled body. If he had killed in pleasure, the forest would have let Rakhan starve, it would have smothered him and stamped him out. But Rakhan had enough to do for pleasure; he wasn't in the fiery pits of Isengard fighting over scraps of plunder and drilling endlessly. All of life, as it turned out, was full of beauty; even the decay of life melted into life's rhythms. Rakhan kept moving. If he lay idle he could fill with rage that Saruman and Sauron had denied him the experience of life, and Rakhan noticed that when he went hot with anger he saw nothing of the forest. It even seemed to retreat from him, to grow cold and forbidding. So he kept moving. He left the world behind him and roamed through the gullys and narrow warbling rivers and jumped over mossy logs, existing only in the moment, determined to ignore his old life until he forgot it entirely.

On the seventh day, as Eowyn and Faramir spoke of love and pain in the Houses of Healing, Rakhan came upon a wounded doe lying in a fern-filled gulch. She had fallen from the heights and snapped her leg in a muddy pit, and Rakhan slid down the hill to have a closer look.

The doe thrashed wildly, but her broken foreleg kept her from getting a purchase on the treacherous ground. Rakhan pulled a long knife from his hip on instinct, and he brandished it before her to signify his intentions. Overhead the forest gave a low, menacing groan, and the Uruk-hai tightened his hand on the knife.

But then a sudden motion from atop the gulch caught his sharp eyes. He looked up and saw, to his amazement, a young fawn, almost newborn, pacing back and forth in agitation. Terror kept the baby from starting down the steep slope; hunger, and some emotion Rakhan could feel but not name, kept the youngling from abandoning the doe. He fell back on his haunches and gazed at the doe, unsure now of what to do. Her eyes were wide in panic, a luminous shade of brown that reminded him of sunlight on tree bark. Yet it wasn't just panic for herself. Rakhan was stunned to see her turning her head again and again to her baby on the hill.

He had killed perhaps a thousand deer in the seven years of his life, most for sport. He knew what they looked like in death, what they tasted like, how their bodies felt under his cold knife. What he had never seen was a mother with her fawn; he had never even known, let alone noticed, that there was some bond between them other than the greed of a sucking baby to its food source.

Rakhan climbed back up the hill, and found a suitable stick, which he used his knife to whittle into two smooth, straight pieces about as long as the doe's foreleg. He unfastened and removed his heavy black cuirass and tore one of the long, hanging ends of his black tunic. Rakhan was no healer but he had seen limbs bound up in Isengard, after battles when Saruman wished to keep what soldiers he could alive. Those who were too badly off were butchered for the troops' meat, of course, and so Rakhan had enough knowledge of what was treatable. The bone had not broken the skin, nor did it jut out at a far angle. Excited as a child, the Uruk-hai hurried back down into the vale.

Again, the poor creature took a terror of him. Rakhan had no fear of her sharp hooves; his bronze-grey skin was tough and marred with scars and slashes from seven years of warfare. But he couldn't brace and wrap the foreleg if she would not lie still, and for a moment he thought to strike her in the head with his thick fist.

Then he thought: I have trained the wargs for their small, fierce orc riders. I have called wolves and spoken to them with my mind, and set them against the children of men. And so Rakhan cleared his mind in the same way, yet he filled his heart with the thrilling desire to heal rather than to harm. He sought out the doe's white-rimmed eyes and let the thought flood his essence: _I am here to help, I can fix you, I can bring you to your baby and lay you down in a quiet place. I will see that you have food and water. I will care for you until you are strong again._

And he released the thought.

For a moment there was no sign that she had heard him. Then, slowly, uncertain, the doe relaxed and accepted the Uruk-hai. Rakhan reached his hand out tentatively, stroking the animal's strong, sweat-dampened neck. He knew no gentle songs to sing, and so he murmured softly: senseless, meaningless noises meant to soothe and distract the doe as he set and bound her leg. Once finished he lifted the doe easily in his arms and brought her up the hill. The baby, innocent of his violent race, followed him joyfully, causing a peculiar warm sensation in the Uruk-hai's chest.

He found a thicket where good plants grew in abundance, and he lay the doe down. The baby at once lay beside her and began to nurse. Rakhan felt himself lighten, as if some unseen force was pulling him up. He smiled to himself, unbound his helmet from the light pack on his back where his bow and quiver were kept, and sought out a stream. Living things needed water.

Rakhan found a closeby place to sleep that night, and every day he went to check on the doe and bring her water. He cut bark from newly fallen branches and gathered sweet flowers from the forest floor, making sure she had enough to eat. At night when he lay himself in a hole or nestled in a low hanging branch, he felt himself full of the most delicious and odd feeling of satisfaction. He was stunned to realize that this felt far better than the short, meaningless pleasure he had once taken from torturing and killing helpless things. He was also stunned to find that the feeling was not unfamiliar, when he considered it. It was as if some long dormant part of himself had blinked awake, and though his soul was still dark, a small, bright light flickered in the blackness.

The deer was admirably strong. Only twenty days had passed before she rose to her feet, gazed at Rakhan with a profound gratitude, and then led her baby off into the deep forest, returning to her free life.

Her absence, astonishingly, hurt his chest. Rakhan had grown accustomed to tending to her, talking to her, stroking her smooth warm body. He had enjoyed the baby greatly. Now they were gone. But the pleasure of knowing he had saved her, and the fawn, remained, lighting up his days as he roamed the forest. When he needed to hunt again, he bowed his head, because he had come to understand that life had value.

Rakhan spent his days in endless, directionless exploration. When he thought on his past life now, he felt only pain and bleary darkness, and so he tried to forget it entirely. Fangorn Forest had accepted him, and Rakhan lost all sense of time and memory in its ancient world.

Until one day, bathing in a tributary of the Entwash, he saw the tracks.

Rakhan jumped out of the cool running water, his powerful body dripping, his thick, long black hair sodden like a wet wool cloak. He left his clothes, armor, and weapons on the roughly-cut bank and dropped down beside the tracks, his heart pounding in his throat. He traced the distorted half-moon shape with his finger, and felt the warm earth. The tracks were fresh, disappearing into the ferns. A horse had come this way, this morning maybe.

Rakhan, crushed by memory of the world, returned to the bank and pulled his clothes and gear on. He glanced sharply around, searching for mounted warriors. They couldn't be hunting me, he thought. But who else kept horses, save men and elves? Both were his enemy. The wild horses wouldn't live in the forest, but on the plain, so there was little doubt that even if his enemies hadn't come for him per se, they would give him a fight when they found him. Rakhan regretted abandoning his helmet in the doe's thicket, but it had been stamped with Sauron's eye over a half-scrubbed white palm, signs that Rakhan never wanted to see again.

He wasn't under attack, but he had to know where the man was and why he had come. Rakhan figured he would probably have to kill the man, or the elf. This was not Lorien or Rivendell, and Rakhan had killed enough elves at Helm's Deep. It was regrettable, but Rakhan couldn't allow himself to be discovered. He realized that he had been granted a life, but it would be one spent always on guard. His blood and race cursed Rakhan to exist in a perpetual state of war.

The land began to rise again. There were hills under the ancient forest, sometimes gentle, sometimes roughly exposed chunks of limestone. Rakhan had found caves days before, tiny caves full of the musty smell of some beast or another who called them home. For days Rakhan had smelled the pungent scent of wolves in the wind, and he had hoped to see some, he'd hoped to find a pack of wolves to make his companions in Fangorn. That would have to be put off until the man was dealt with.

Fool of a man, Rakhan thought as the land got higher. The horse had taken an obvious trail over a rocky path, winding around thick trees up the crest of a hill. The tracks were so fresh that Rakhan dropped to his belly as he reached the top, creeping forward in battle-trained silence. But when he reached the crest and peered down into a fern drenched valley dotted with shade loving purple violets, he gasped in astonishment.

It was not a man at all, but a golden-haired maiden of Rohan, kneeling behind a small dark boy with long black braids. She was helping him fit an arrow to a roughly hewed bow. Her hair was braided and wound around her head, showing off her proud, chiseled features. She was stunningly beautiful, full of a noble grace that made Rakhan's heart pound violently. He did not know it, but his own mother looked much like this maiden; Rakhan's straight, strong nose and high sharp cheekbones, and the well-defined bow of his lips that had won him nothing but taunts from his fellows, came from that long dead Rohirric woman.

But it wasn't beauty alone that arrested the runaway warrior.

The child that the beauty cuddled and smiled for and instructed was, somehow, a young Uruk-hai.


	2. Chapter 2

Transfixed, Rakhan watched the lesson. Under the woman's tutelage, the boy shot a young stag. They were almost totally silent but their joy was obvious, and then the boy threw his arms around her and she held him close. Rakhan couldn't place the boy's age: he had never seen a young one of his own kind. He himself had been ripped out of the womb, and rushed to his full size in a pit of bloody, nutrient rich slime and dark, unspeakably foul magic. But he knew regular orcs had young like this, their breeders whelping litters in the depths of Moria or the Misty Mountains. Still: this boy was Uruk-hai. It was impossible to understand.

The horse, a dappled bay who blended almost seamlessly into the darkness of the forest, waited patiently while the woman and boy retrieved the deer. The woman was slender but strong enough to drag it along, with some help from the strong boy. She was young, and like the boy dressed in neat deerskins and leather boots. That too was perplexing: the people of Rohan wore clothing of cloth. But she was clearly of that race: her hair was the color of honey and her skin was clear and fair. Rakhan could smell her when the wind changed: the rich, musky scent of a fertile young human woman that filled his senses and made his blood rush.

He dropped back beneath the crest, holding his breath. Killing a soldier of Rohan would have been one thing, an easy thing, but what would he do now? This woman and the Uruk boy she seemed to look after were total mystery. He needed to know what she was doing in Fangorn forest, if there were more of her kind around. Could it be that some of the horse people had come to live in the forest, away from their villages and their king? Or was it possible that they were alone? That sudden thought—that a human female could be a refugee from the world like himself—was enough to stay his hand in killing her. And he couldn't kill the boy. As far as Rakhan knew there was no other Uruk-hai boy in the wide world, and this one had never been Saruman's slave, as Saruman didn't allow his captive bred Uruk-hai to have a childhood.

That thought led to more questions. Had the boy been born? It couldn't be possible that the young woman had born him, surely! The captives in the pits—if they survived the mating—couldn't handle the pregnancy and were almost always near dead by the time the fetus was taken for the pits. No one save Saruman knew how long it took to develop an Uruk-hai baby the natural way, but surely it would be too long for such a slender girl. And Rakhan doubted any human female could survive the birth.

Rakhan had no choice but to follow them. When they retreated, the horse following the woman's soft call, Rakhan climbed stealthy down the mountain.

He followed a ways behind them. The low humming that he had become accustomed to seemed to stop, as if the forest was watching with its breath held. Even the birds refused to sing. Rakhan could hear dry leaves crunching beneath his steps; he wondered how the woman couldn't. But if she was unaware the boy was alert. He turned around more than once, causing Rakhan to slink up against the bark of one tree or another. Rakhan grinned, playing with the young one who was not trained enough to spy him.

Then they seemed to disappear into the wild, tangled brush along a hillside, the horse with them. That was easy enough to understand; they were living in a cave, and someone had hidden the entrance so that it seemed only a tangle of vines, brush, and branches crawling up the hill.

Rakhan leaned against a mossy tree, wondering what he was to do. This was obviously their home. He soon smelled smoke, as it made its way out of some crevice in the rock. The woman wasn't a traveler or with a group of her people, she was alone in the forest with the Uruk-hai boy and her horse. The forest was large enough; Rakhan needed only to travel on in another direction, and return to his wild, wordless existence with the creatures and the trees of Fangorn.

And yet that life—so rich only that morning—suddenly seemed completely hollow to him. He knew he would go mad with curiosity about the boy especially. He wanted to observe the child, he wanted to watch as he learned to hunt and grow to his full size. How long might it take? Days, or many years? Would he speak the Rohirran tongue? Or the orcish? Rakhan spoke both, and the common tongue of men as well, as Saruman had required. As for the woman, Rakhan thought briefly that he could use her too—but then he frowned. A small voice murmured to him that he didn't truly wish to destroy such a beautiful creature with the violence of his desire. More importantly, no one could command him to: even if he had enjoyed it then, now Rakhan felt that this was yet another thing that Saruman had denied him. Even the animals of the forest mated freely with partners of their choice. He was surely no less than them!

Rakhan decided he would find somewhere nearby to pass the night, and then return in the morning. He would watch the cave until they came out again and then follow them at a safe distance. He could satisfy his curiosity about the child, he could see what it might have been like for him had Saruman not seen a childhood as irrelevant. _If I saw the wizard today,_ he thought, _I would strangle him._

But Rakhan didn't have to linger on his hatred. It was an old emotion, a boring one, and the image of the beauty and her Uruk boy was much more interesting.

He watched for a few days, learning right away that the woman and young one were alone in the forest in fact. The boy, it seemed, was permitted to wander about the cave, within shouting distance. He touched _everything_ he saw, and ran as fleetly as a wolf cub in the forest. Even more entrancing, the young one laughed often, and called songbirds to land on his fingertips. He could climb a tree faster than the most agile scout in Sauron's army. Rakhan wanted badly to run with the boy, hoping to understand his complete freedom and joy. But he could never get very close when the young one was around. The boy could sense something when Rakhan crept near.

The woman often came out alone to gather water. One dangerous day Rakhan saw her bathing in a shallow pool, and it frustrated him maddeningly that she washed so modestly, cupping her hands full and running them under her loose leather wrap. He wanted to see all of her. He forgot how to breathe when she let her hair down, and it cascaded in a ripple of gold to her hips. As soon as he realized what he was thinking, and how his agonizingly his body reacted, Rakhan brutally forced himself away and left them alone for the day. That day, after hunting, he crept through the forest gathering flowers like he did for the deer. He didn't know what he was doing, as if some other will had possessed him once more. He kept at it until nighttime, roving over miles of forest. With only bits of starlight sparkeling the forest floor to light his way, Rakhan lost himself to a moment of madness and tossed the hundreds of white, pink, and red flowers around the mouth of her cave. He woke furiously in the morning. _Fool!_ He berated himself, the curse so much harsher in his own tongue. _She will know someone has found her, and she will take the boy away with her!_

Rakhan lept up and ran towards the cave.

But he'd not gone far when he slowed, then stopped entirely, inhaling the air. It was tinged with a thick, salty, metallic scent, overlaid with the deep stench of rotten onions. It was unmistakable: there were men in the forest!

Rakhan hurried, but kept stealth as he went to the hillock where he could watch the cave mouth from. The woman was out alone, and it was as he thought: she was terrified, holding a handful of his flowers and snapping her head about, searching for him. But at that exact moment, two unkempt, wild looking men rushed out from the trees. The woman's scream pierced through the air as one snatched her, raised her in the air, and slammed her down on her back, while his companion pinned her arms. Rakhan leaped up and ripped his hooked sword from its sheath, just as eight more Dunlanders emerged from the rocks.


	3. Chapter 3

_How dare they?_

Rakhan snapped his sword back and ripped his bow from his back. He had forgotten this feeling in the forest: the sneering pleasure that his own power filled him with, as he drew the string taunt and loosed one of the heavy black arrows. It hit under the side of the man on top of the beauty with a hard thump, boring deep into his lungs and heart, and he collapsed on top of her as dead as if he had fallen from the high wall of Helm's Deep. The men startled like deer. Rakhan hastened down the hill, snatching another arrow and drawing it back, the creaking of the massive bow loud enough for his enemies to hear. Rakhan felt their arrogant resolve melting away at the sight of him, and he grinned viciously, and loosed the second arrow into the throat of the man who had pinned the beauty's arms.

But though the men were shaken, those left standing after the second man fell decided to fight: all the better, then. Rakhan shouldered his bow and drew his sword, advancing down the hill at an easy jog. The men began to scream and fill with their own battle lust, and they rushed down from the cave. Rakhan slowed his pace and let the fight run to him.

_All battle is no more than drawing a circle in the dirt, and refusing your enemies passage through your circle,_ his commander Gharsh-il had taught him, and it was more of an instinct now for Rakhan than an instruction. The Dunlanders had no such refinements. Wild men, perhaps even from the horde he had met in Isengard, they rushed too drunk for blood to plan. Rakhan was a Fighting Uruk-hai, the White Wizard's perfection. He let his hooked black sword fly with ghastly speed. He took the biggest man first—a frenetic frizzy haired brute near his own massive size-with a powerful slash from shoulder to opposite hip, opening him entirely. Rakhan's sword winged up and back to the next closest attacker, who lost his head. The third took the squared point of the Uruk-hai's sword to the temple, blood seeping out from his eyes. And the fourth ran. Rakhan whipped his sword from his wrist and it spun into the Dunlandian's back. Rakhan had barely broken a sweat.

His bright eyes swept up the hill, but she was gone! Was it possible that there were more men, and he had gone soft in his time in the forest, missing them?

And then the leather, brush covered flap of the cave mouth lifted and the woman bolted out. She clutched the boy in her arms, and as she darted off the boy's slanted eyes went wide to see Rakhan standing there. "Mother! Mother, stop, look!" he screamed in the Rohirric tongue, a blow to Rakhan that no man's skinny sword could have dealt.

Rakhan took off, his heavy swift feet pounding the ground, tearing it up as he chased her. Battle fever bled off into the pursuit of the hunt, and for a moment Rakhan was propelled by instinct alone. Beneath it all, however, was the earth shaking shock: _Mother? _That beautiful girl-child had an Uruk son? How could it be possible?

Rakhan couldn't help it anymore, he had tortured himself with her mystery long enough! He darted through the forest, through rivers and over boulders and logs, beating down her path stride by stride. She ran with all the grace of the daughters of high-born men, brilliant golden men like those who had born down on him with the Shining One on his silver-white horse at the end of the lost Battle of Helm's Deep.

Until she didn't run anymore, that was, until her legs crumpled beneath her and she fell, and her boy flew from her arms and tumbled into the brambles.


	4. Chapter 4

The golden haired young woman cried out to her son, telling him to run. Rakhan skidded to a stop before her, flooded with the sour scent of her terror. Her ankle was twisted—likely broken—but she pulled herself up and stumbled away from Rakhan, snatching her son's hand and dragging him away.

Then, from the direction of the cave, Rakhan heard the sharp shout of a man: "Orcs!" A moment later, three dozen more Dunlanders—a raiding party on their way to despoil the villages of Rohan while its warriors were in Gondor—poured down the hill.

The woman was so consumed by her fear of Rakhan that she didn't seem to notice the true danger, but the Uruk-hai boy was sharply perceptive. "Get down," Rakhan growled to him, and he dropped like a trained soldier.

Rakhan bundled the woman into his arms and brought her to the ground. She fought and twisted in his arms—a delicious feeling—and made to scream. Rakhan covered her mouth with his wide hand and hissed in her ear, "Be still or they will find you!"

He lay on top of her back, pressing her into the small, brush-filled ditch. She shook as hard as the earth before it broke under the Black Gate. The Dunlanders streamed through the trees only a stone's throw away, and finally the woman went limp, her wide sky-blue eyes staring in horror at the wild, heavily armed men. Rakhan gazed sideways at the boy, and put a finger over his lips. The child nodded and lay still, silent, watchful. If he was frightened, Rakhan couldn't tell.

The men went on, finally disappearing into the darkness of the forest. Sure that finally, they were all gone, Rakhan exhaled softly. His release of tension was a trigger to the woman, and she began to thrash and twist again, clawing at Rakhan with desperate fury.

"Mother, it's all right!" the boy insisted. "The bad ones are gone!"

She heard nothing, saw nothing but the Uruk-hai on top of her, hard and heavy as stone. Rakhan was overwhelmed by the woman's raw gut terror. He snatched her arms and pinned them, and realizing that she couldn't fight him she seemed to melt beneath him, letting out a choked sob before she fell into darkness.

Rakhan backed off, squatting over her. He plucked an oak leaf from her braided hair, then looked down at her ankle, swelling inside her rough-made leather boot. He felt the boy's penetrating blue-green eyes boring holes in him.

"You look like me."

"Aye," Rakhan said quietly. "She's hurt. Let's get her to your cave. The Dunlanders are gone for now, but I don't like that they were here at all. We'd do right to get your mother hidden safe."

Rakhan lifted the woman easily, cradling her in his arms. The boy jumped up, trotting alongside Rakhan. "What did you call those men?"

"Dunlanders. Wild men who live over the mountains on the other side of this forest. They'll be making a raid on Rohan, and likely coming back this way."

The boy frowned, perplexed. Clearly the woman had told him nothing of her own origins, or of the world outside the forest. "Why did they want to hurt Mother?"

"Because she's beautiful. So let's be quick and quiet, and hide her away."

The child bit his lips with sharp white teeth. He was bursting with questions, his world thrown about and re-shaped right before his eyes. But he obeyed Rakhan, skipping through the forest beside him. He led Rakhan into his cave, which was surprisingly long and large. The smell of smoke, herbs, and dried apples permeated the air, along with the smell of horseflesh. The horse was kept in the back, the way peasants kept their most prized livestock in their huts. It stamped its feet anxiously at the new, frightening scent of Rakhan.

There was a wide bed on the floor, a mattress made of leather sewn together with sinew and stuffed soft, with thick wolf-pelts spread over the top. Rakhan lay the woman down as gently as he could, asking the boy, "Your mother killed for this?"

"She can shoot anything," the boy said brightly. "She is teaching me… But I've never seen a bow like _yours!"_

Rakhan grunted softly, and unslung his black bow. The Uruk-child's eyes widened in glee, and he took it in his small hands and tried to pluck the string. It wouldn't budge for him, and Rakhan grinned. "You'll need to get a little bigger to use the likes of this."

Rakhan studied the child: his skin was the same shadowed grey-bronze as Rakhan's, but his features were slightly softened, showing more of a human influence in the roundness of his face. He was slender, too; Rakhan wondered if he would bulk up as he grew.

"Who sired you, young one?"

The boy looked up blankly.

"Men call it a father. Have you a father?"

The child, confused, shook his head. So: she had said nothing to him of that, either. Perhaps she'd been raped on a raid. It would fit, then, her not wanting to speak of it to the child.

"My name is Gaelen," the boy said.

"Rakhan. Tell me, Gaelen, have you any way to heat water, anything to put into a stew? Your mother will wake hurt and hungry. I'll need some bandages as well, to fix up that ankle."

The boy returned the bow, and jumped up to collect venison and root vegetables from the buried, stone covered larder at the side of the cave. Rakhan stirred up the small hearthfire, and the boy set up some contraption of greenwood over the fire. He showed Rakhan a large leather sack and said, "Mother heats water or soup in this, high over the fire. There is fresh water in the bowl over there, mother made it from leather and wood and lined it with clay. She can make anything." Gaelen paused for a moment, and then added, "But she's lucky you came to save her. Who _are_ you, anyway?"

Rakhan snorted softly and replied, "I'm not sure anymore, young one. I was a warrior… someone who fights and kills for someone else. Most of my kind are dead now, or hiding. I am alone in the forest, trying to find my way."

"You lost the fight," Gaelen summarized cleverly.

"We lost the war. Keep the fire hot, boy, while I cut up the meat."

The woman woke to the scent of bubbling stew. Rakhan was ready for her to be upset at his presence, but he was unprepared for the sheer violence of her fear. She would have ran away on her broken ankle had he not grabbed her in his massive arms. Certainly, her kind had cause to feel an Uruk-hai on sight, but could she not tell that she was safe in her own place, with food being cooked to warm her belly?

_There's something wrong with her mind,_ Rakhan realized, and he spoke softly in her ear, over her wild sobbing, "Steady, woman. I'm not here to hurt you, and you're upsetting your child."

As she fought helplessly, Rakhan noticed a vicious scar on her throat, as if someone had ripped a chunk of the smooth pale flesh away. It extended beneath the high collar of her dress, and he could only imagine what had happened. He thought he saw teeth marks in her mangled flesh.

She would not yield until he overpowered her, clutching her body so tight that she couldn't move. He couldn't help being powerfully excited by the feeling of the sweet-smelling woman pressed in his arms, but he tried to ignore it. And then the woman's strength rushed away again, as she realized that she was trapped, and she keened a high, mournful wail. "Come, Gaelen," Rakhan told the disturbed boy. "Let your mother feel your hands and see your face. She's lost in fear."

The boy hurried to his mother and took her face in his small hands. "You're safe, Mother," he told her urgently, "Rakhan has saved us, and he's making you a nice stew. And if any bad men come back, he will kill them, won't you Rakhan?"

"Hush about that," Rakhan said sharply. She didn't need to hear talk of killing. But it was working, thankfully. The woman's eyes began to focus on her child, and her sobbing turned to gasps. A shudder tore through her.

"Please let me go," she whispered.

"I don't want you to run, lady. I think you've broken your ankle. If I let you go, will you be still and let me bind it for you?"

She was silent for a while, except for her shallow, panicked breathing. Then she cried, "Please don't take me away!"

"I'm not going to take you anywhere, lady. The war is over, and I'm living alone in the forest. I've no reason to harm you. I want to speak with you, and your son. I've never seen a young one of my kind before. He is clever, and full of life. He is more fortunate than he knows to have such a mother."

Again, silence, as if she was hearing her own tortured memories and it took Rakhan's voice a long while to penetrate through them. Finally she asked, "The war has ended? How? When?"

"Two turns of the moon back. I can't be sure exactly; time is strange here in the forest. But Lugburz—Barad-dur, you know it as—has fallen. Sauron is defeated and Saruman is long diminished. There is a new king in Gondor, lady, and a new king of Rohan as well."

"Prince Theodred?"

Rakhan closed his eyes over the memory of the golden prince of Rohan, spitted on an Uruk-hai pike. "No. Another, I don't know his name, but he is bright and fierce. And I am hunted… as your son will be. I would protect him, and you. Now, can I release you? Will you be calm? You seem to feel no pain, lady, but you will cripple yourself for life if you keep jumping up on that bad foot."

She drew a hard breath, and looked to her son. The boy was frowning at Rakhan's words, not understanding why he should be hunted by anyone. But Gaelen was a deeply sensitive child, and he shook aside his own frightened thoughts and smiled at his mother. "We are lucky for Rakhan, Mother. He isn't going to hurt you. Let him fix your ankle."

She nodded tightly, in spite of herself, and Rakhan reluctantly let her go. Her warmth lingered against his chest long after she scurried away from him, sliding to the other side of the bed. Rakhan reached for the small leather pouch at his belt, and retrieved a small tin flask. "Drink a sip or two. It is hot, but it will dull your pain." _And your fear,_ Rakhan thought.

She took a small sip, making a sour face as the fiery liquid hit her belly. But it's warming virtue spread through her body, casting a haze over her sharp pain and terror. Drunk, she lay back on her bed, and Rakhan smiled to himself. He should have poured it down her throat at the beginning, and saved himself some trouble. Sure that she was deeply under the mellowing effects of the Uruk-hai fire-water, Rakhan took her foot carefully and set it on his lap. Even medicated, the woman shivered at his touch, a physical reaction that could not be sedated like her mind.

"I'll have to cut the boot, but I will sew it for you later."

She nodded, her dark honey lashes fluttering over her bright blue eyes. Sure that she would not take fright again, Rakhan asked the question that was burning him with curiosity. "Tell me, woman. How is it that you have an Uruk-hai child? I did not know such things were possible."

Her eyes widened instantly, flushing with tears. Rakhan wondered if he ought not to have asked. Her voice was clear and sharp, "You do not know? How could you not?"

Rakhan shook his head. "I've no idea."

The woman—only able to think of it sedated—took a harsh breath and said, "I was in Isengard, Uruk. I was a captive chained in the pits of Isengard."


	5. Chapter 5

_It was impossible!_

How could such a delicate, beautiful creature survive the breeding pits of Isengard, let alone emerge from them with her child still in her belly? Rakhan forced himself to forget the last time he was ordered to that particular duty with three of his comrades and a wide-hipped female from the Westmark. It was a memory of blood and tears and screams, a vicious competitive game with his fellow ideal soldiers, topped off with a savage explosion of mind-numbing pleasure. He sucked a tight breath through his teeth and murmured, "How did you get away?"

No matter how sedated she was, the woman's bright eyes clouded and a strong shiver racked her fragile body. She swallowed hard and sat up a little. She was unable to look at him directly, but she extended her hands to him. He could see that they shook, that there was some odd weakness to them. Rakhan was compelled to take those small hands and press them to his face, but he kept still.

"I broke them. To squeeze them out of my bonds. They thought me half-dead anyway, and I was unguarded for much of the time."

Rakhan furrowed his smooth brow, imagining the strength—or the desperation—necessary for a human female to shatter her own hands. "And you came to the forest, and bore your child alone."

She closed her eyes, remaining silent for so long Rakhan thought she had slipped into a drugged slumber. The fire-water was powerful even for an Uruk-hai, a drought made to keep a soldier fighting with holes in his belly or limbs hacked off. Then her muffled response came: "No, I went home. And they wouldn't have me. They said I was befouled, degraded. Filth. My betrothed didn't want me anymore, and my father wouldn't have me in his house. That is why I came to the forest, and had my son alone. I was twelve years old. A child, by our standards."

She opened her eyes again, and looked to her son, who had gone off to tend the horse at the far back of the cave. Rakhan saw a tear form, and then her jaw tighten as she denied its fall. "Gaelen is all I have in this world."

"What is your name?"

She wouldn't answer, but he could feel her emotions as they ranged about: anger and fear, swinging around like hawks fighting in flight. An ache he had never felt before, unless maybe when the doe took her fawn and left: she was lonely here, an outcast. Rakhan had fled the world and delighted in it, the woman had been forced out, forever tainted by the enemies of her people. His eyes flickered to the scar on her throat. He knew what that was now: it was just another moment in the frenzy.

"I don't…" Had it ever been so hard to think of a thing to say? "I'm… Not bound to the wizard anymore. Or Sauron. A short while ago I would have feared to speak that name."

She frowned a little, examining her outstretched leg, the clever fringe she had cut into the bottom of her long leather skirt. "So I am still."

"No, you must understand: he's gone, completely, completely gone. He could speak to me, you see, in my mind. I was a commander at the end. I couldn't break his will. If he commanded me to raise my arm, my arm raised itself. Now there is only me."

The boy returned, bringing his mother a carved wooden cup of cool water. Whatever horrors she had in her heart she smiled at him, so clearly full of joy for Gaelen. She put out her arms and drew him close, and the boy lay his head in her lap, staring at the Uruk-hai warrior.

"I understand you," she whispered, brushing her son's many neat, long black braids, a style that would have taken her several hours to complete. "But I don't know if you lie or not. I don't know why you did that today, to the Dunlanders."

"I didn't want them to hurt you."

"So you were watching us?" The woman frowned, scraping her lip with her neat teeth—the same gesture her son made, Rakhan remembered. For the first time she looked up at him, and Rakhan could tell it cost her deeply in pain and courage. "That was you, wasn't it! The flowers! Eru, what—what do you _want_ from us?"

She was appalled, terrified. _As rightly she should be,_ he thought. But the war was over now, and he was no slave. "Just to know you, lady," he said quietly. "And the little one. I was not ever small. If you hadn't been so brave, they would have taken him from you before he even spent a moon in your belly, and they would have done their magic on him, and he would have come out fully grown and ready to fight."

The woman gasped, and hugged her little boy tightly, shaking her head. "Gaelen is a good boy." She paused for a long moment, studying his face, smoothing a stray braid back with her slim, crooked fingers. "My name is Eolina," she said quietly. "And if you would be around us sometimes, I would be glad for the meat until I mend. But don't—Mind you, it will be difficult for me. Don't push too close."

Rakhan smiled, even though she was avoiding looking at him again. Gaelen, sleepy and silent in his mother's lap, innocent of everything, met his gaze and smiled back.


	6. Chapter Six

As brave as Eolina was, the crack in her ankle soon began to ache oppressively. She snaked her arms away from her sleeping son, but hesitated to get up. The Uruk-hai was by the fire, checking the tenderness of the meat. She wanted him to give her the large patchwork leather bag across the cave, which was full of what healing plants grew in Fangorn. Willow bark would be good for pain, though hardly what she needed to take it away.

She waited until she couldn't stand it anymore. Only then did Eolina sit up. The Uruk-hai turned his eyes on her the moment she moved. She saw the flash of pale green and that was enough for her, she dropped her eyes to the silver and black fur of her coverlet.

"Almost ready," the Uruk-hai replied.

"I need something for the pain," she told him. "I have a bag in the corner, and there is willow bark in it. Do you know willow bark?"

Rakhan instead came and squatted by the bedside. "This has willow bark… and other, better things." He pulled out the tin flask again, and put it at her bedside. "Take no more than a sip or two, when you need it. But tuck it out of sight so the boy doesn't drink it."

Rakhan watched her as she drank a tidy sip, capped the flack and tucked it beneath the mattress. She pillowed her head gracefully under her hands, but she couldn't find sleep with the Uruk-hai near. Her discomfort was plain, and he felt a fool standing over her in silence, something he had never experienced with his fellow warriors.

Rakhan returned to the fire and prodded at the slow-burning coals. He watched her secretively, waiting for her to sleep or speak. Finally he asked her, "Do you know the new King of Gondor?"

Eolina was startled. "No—I heard there was a legend only, never a king."

"He is a great big man with cold grey eyes, piercing eyes of liquid iron. He lead an army of Elves at Helm's Deep, even the Elf commander in his pretty shining armor. Some say the King of Gondor cannot be killed, that arrows and swords will pass clean through him and not leave a mark."

He hoped she would take interest in the battle; he would tell her stories, although maybe scrubbed of the detail he would share with another fighter.

But Eolina frowned. "Helm's Deep? How could that be? Is Edoras—is my capital destroyed? The hall of our king?"

"Not in any battle I fought. But we were ten thousand deep, Eolina. They couldn't have stayed in your city, I hear it has a wooden palisade and no more."

She brushed her fingers over her lips. "My father would have fought. Was there… great loss?"

"We—my men—were routed, don't worry. And Isengard is destroyed."

Eolina's eyes fluttered shut, and Rakhan knew he had stumbled. Had he been captured and tortured in a place, he would wish daily to hear of its destruction. Eolina seemed to take no pleasure from it. "Your stew is ready," he said quietly, and retreated in silence to the fire.

It was surprisingly good to the woman, rich and meaty, only wanting for some soft potatoes. She ate half of it quickly, an eye on her sleeping boy. When he didn't wake on his own she rubbed his back and murmured in his ear. Gaelen woke brightly and brought life into the cave again. Rakhan found that he was desperate not the leave them; he'd have to be more careful about what he said to her. If only he didn't want to know so many things! How big had Gaelen been, when he was born? Did he eat meat, or nurse like a forest creature? The image of Eolina with the Uruk-hai child at her breast flooded him unbidden as he watched her share her stew with the boy. The ugly scar was on the other side of her throat; this side was milky white, with a touch of sunny gold. The cut of her jaw was delicate and proud.

Rakhan couldn't help it; his eyes followed Eolina like a bee to honey. But it was just as good to watch the boy. Gaelen was close to Rakhan's own color, a shadowy shade of grey-bronze. There was a touch of humanity to his tone, like many Uruk-hai. Saruman couldn't extinguish all the parts of his soldiers that came from human women. Naturally born Gaelen had his mother's smile completely, and an easiness around her human female body that Rakhan had never witnessed in his own kind. And he certainly had no scars; Rakhan had a thin slash through his brow and down to his cheekbone. He was lucky that hadn't blinded him or dropped his eye. That scar was his first, picked up in the fight he was thrown into moments after his own birth. His face had also had a passing meeting with an arrow in an early raid, this slice across his opposite cheek. A thick, ugly cable marred his sword arm, near the shoulder, where a man had tried to take the offending limb off. His back was covered in whiplash, the favorite tool of Commander Gharsh-il. It was a pleasure to see Gaelen's unmarked form.

The boy finished his stew and filled the bowl in for his mother. Then he turned to Rakhan and asked, "Will you help me with my chores? You can do some of Mother's work, so she can rest."

Eolina snatched at her breath quietly. "Gaelen—"

"It's all right, Eolina. I won't hurt your baby."

"Why would Rakhan hurt me, Mother?" Gaelen asked. Rakhan was thrown off by how quickly the little child who had just lain in his mother's lap turned into a stunningly bright individual. "He's just saved us!"

Rakhan saw her fighting with herself, and then she looked up at him for the second time, and her eyes flashed fiercely, like a mother wolf. It struck Rakhan as humerous, the delicate lovely face bearing a threat. "I won't hurt your cub," he told her. "But he may hurt me. What do you mean: do your mother's chores?"

"Oh, bring the horse out—that's my job—and sweep the cave, clean up from our meal, fetch wood for the fire, and freshen the water in the barrel… But we won't beat out the furs, Mother, you should sleep…"

Not much longer Rakhan found himself in the buffoonish position of sweeping with Eolina's small willow branch broom. All of his physical adeptness and dexterity meant nothing, and he was terrified Eolina found him stupid. He could only imagine what the warriors of Isengard would have made of it, before they tried to him apart for weakness. But when Rakhan finally worked up the guts to look at her, he found her asleep at last. The drugged brew, and her body's exhaustion from the break in her bone, had finally caught up with her.

Eolina slept through the evening and into the night. Gaelen was as enamored with Rakhan as the warrior was with the boy. The child had known since he was old enough to look at his reflection in Eolina's one treasure—a polished bronze mirror—that he was much different than his mother. He couldn't help but attach himself to the mature, powerful version of himself. Rakhan found himself in the strange new position of having the child look up to him, and that stirred Rakhan's mind toward yet another revelation: what was it good and right to teach Eolina's son? Rakhan thought with fleeting bitterness, _perhaps just the opposite of everything Saruman wanted me to learn._ And then the boy gave him an affectionate lop-sided grin and Rakhan's bitterness melted away.

"Will you sleep here tonight?" Gaelen asked, washing his face clean in a bowl of fresh water. "I don't want those Men to come back, and you're not here. And… I want you to be here when I wake up."

Rakhan had never been asked to keep anyone company before; it was another warm, rich feeling, akin to the way he felt helping the deer, or wrapping up Eolina's ankle. "I will sleep by the mouth of the cave."

"Wouldn't you be happier by the fire?"

"No, little one. I'm used to sleeping out in the weather, without any cover at all. And I can hear better if the Men return. And," Rakhan added quietly, "I don't want to frighten your mother, if she wakes up in the night, by being too close. She may not be glad to see me in the morning either."

"Why is she so frightened of you, Rakhan?"

Rakhan found that he didn't want to lie to Gaelen, who was so full of truth. But it was not his place to tell the boy. "She thinks I'll hurt her like those Men wanted to," he said simply. "The world is full of creatures that kill and steal and hurt."

"But _you_ would never do that," Gaelen insisted, all shining innocence.

"Go to sleep now, boy, if you want to grow big enough to hunt with my bow."

Gaelen hustled into bed, and Rakhan curled up on the cold floor at the edge of the cave, watching the sleeping mother and son, and holding his breath lest he do anything to shatter the dream he'd strayed into.


	7. Chapter 7

"Eolina, wake up! Wake up!"

The dark honey lashes blinked open, and for one horrible moment Rakhan knew she thought she was back in her torment at Isengard. But quickly, she understood and demanded, "What is it? Are the Men back?"

The Uruk-hai's face was full of some nameless dread. "We should… we should go to the back of the cave. Into the earth. I'll carry you, the boy can grab what things we need. I didn't think it was real. I didn't believe it."

Eolina was too astounded to look away from him. "What are you talking about?"

"The forest—"

Just then Gaelen woke up, surprised to see Rakhan squatting at his bedside.

"The forest?" Eolina shook her head. "What's it done?"

"I'll go look!" Gaelen announced, darting under Rakhan's arm as it shot out to grab him. Rakhan sprung after him, but not before the child pushed away the thick leather flap and let in a fey yellow-green light. The boy's eyes widened curiously. A moment later he grinned and told the big warrior, "I think you should carry Mother here, so she can see."

"They—it—won't attack, will it?" Rakhan couldn't help it; his fingers were curling around the sword he never took off.

Surprisingly the boy lay his small fingers over Rakhan's hand. "You can't fight them, warrior."

Eolina had endured enough. She pushed herself up, standing with her hurt ankle dangling behind her. Rakhan moved to help her until her hand shot up to block him. "Not you. Wingfoot."

To Rakhan's delight, the horse—seeming to sleep—trotted over to Eolina. She wound her fingers through its thick black mane and sprang off her good leg. Her long braid had come undone, hanging messily over her shoulder, and Rakhan thought he understood how Dwarves and Men could become so transfixed with gold. He purposefully didn't look at her strong bare calves pressed against the horse's belly.

Eolina rode up to the entrance, leaned down over the bay's neck, and peered out of the cave. She promptly lost her breath: in the night, a thick ring of emmense trees had encircled her cave. "The light is gold," she said quietly. "I cannot think it is a bad thing."

Rakhan stared out warily. How did the massive trees, with heavy swooping branches, seem to be rooted to the ground? _The stories of those ragged Uruk soldiers were true_, he thought. The very trees had fought his kind.

"I don't think those bad Men will ever come back here," Gaelen decided, and he stepped out into the morning. Rakhan closed his eyes, counting the moments until he would have to rush out and save the boy. And then the woman rode out, and Rakhan had no choice but to grit his jaw and follow.

The air was at once thicker, and a lot more restless, as if the great trees were breathing steadily. Rakhan kept a raptor's gaze on the trunks, but soon his eyes softened and he took in the web of branches around the cave. The hill had not changed—and the flowers Rakhan had thrown about, hardly dried, still covered the ground—but the area was completely closed in by a thick tangle of green.

Gaelen laughed, making the warrior tense and look over. Birds crashed through the trees suddenly, playing. Small song birds and finches, and even the pheasants that Gaelen wanted badly to shoot for his mother's hearth-fire.

"Let's see that we can leave if we please," Eolina determined quietly. "Then we will know if they mean to help us, or trap us." She nudged her horse to a quick trot.

"Stay here," Rakhan told the boy, and he jogged up beside the horse.

"You frighten her," Eolina told him sharply, when he caught up. She whispered encouragement to the horse and pat its neck.

"Better me than whatever might be out there. Or—blocking our way out of here," Rakhan replied, running easily beside her trotting horse.

When they arrived at the barrier, it seemed to push aside, letting them pass out of the protected grove at will. Eolina seemed satisfied. She looked over her shoulder, to her son standing dutifully at the top of the hill, at the cave. "It would be right to make some sort of offering," Eolina said softly, "to show that we mean to live in peace here with Them, and we thank them for their protection."

Rakhan nodded, though he was lost and not entirely sure they were safe. He followed Eolina back up the hill, into the cave, where she stubbornly insisted to gather early herbs—the mint that she had planted herself—a thick slice of venison, and a bowl of clear, cool water. She rolled the mint and meat in a strip of cut cloth and pulled herself again onto the horse's back. "The best of what I have," she told him. "You will have to carry the water. But beware: only do it if you mean _peace_ here. Or I think those trees will smash you into the hillside."

"They might anyway," Rakhan replied tightly.

"No, they are honorable," Eolina told him. "But are you?"

Rakhan bowed his head, unsure.

"They won't hurt you, Rakhan," Gaelen told him, stepping to his side.

"So be it," he whispered. He would not wish to appear less brave than a woman and a youngling. Rakhan carried the bowl of water down the hillside. Eolina slid off her horse again, and Rakhan watched her injured ankle anxiously. She was light on her feet though, or at least her good foot; Rakhan gave Eolina that. She knelt slowly to the ground, lay the kerchief down and unrolled it, and murmured softly to the trees. Then she looked over her shoulder expectantly.

Rakhan examined the bowl of water that he held. It was smoothly carved from hardwood, maybe oak, made by Eolina's broken hands. The clear water it held seemed to gleam in the dim green-gold light. _Well,_ Rakhan thought, _whatever you are, you know I don't want to hurt Eolina and Gaelen. If that is enough for you, accept this gift. _He knelt quickly and set the bowl on the ground in the shade of a massive pine. He waited anxiously for rejection, for the strike to come, for his light to be stamped out.

And then he noticed Eolina: standing back up was harder than getting down for her. Rakhan swept to her side and lifted her by her elbow. Once on her feet she grabbed her horse's mane and pulled away from him. But then she gazed down at the mossy, flowery ground and told him, "Thank you."

Eolina sprang onto the horse's back again, as easily as if she had been born there. Rakhan watched her in amazement for a moment, then gazed over his shoulder at the trees. A man might have touched his heart or said a prayer, but Rakhan knew no gestures of reverence. He nodded his head tightly, and the Ents answered with a soft, warm breeze and a low, humming moan. Rakhan had been accepted.

Up in the lofty heights of Minas Tirith, King Aragorn Elessar entertained the new King of the Mark, Eomer, spreading a feast over the high table and retelling the glory of the fallen King Theoden, who awoke from darkness and led his people to salvation and glory. Theoden lay in state in the tombs of Gondor, but one day soon Eomer would lead his people back to Rohan, where they would honor and bury their old king near the grave mounds of his fathers.

Arwen Evenstar had not yet arrived—she would come at midsummer, though Aragorn didn't know it—and Eowyn, still in her slow recovery, was not present. And so the table was full of soldiers, knights and princes to be sure but soldiers all the same, and the talk was boastful for their hearts were free finally from the Shadow.

A page with a fresh battle scar on his brow, wearing glittering black and silver raiment, crossed the hall swiftly to bow before the two kings. When granted permission he spoke, "There is a Rider here, my lord, who has words for his King Eomer."

Eomer turned his dark piercing gaze to the doorway as a tall red-haired warrior in leather scale armor entered, and made his obeisance to the kings.

"Helmsgaard, rise! What news to you have of the Mark, that you leave your post behind to come to Gondor?"

"I've left Leiflin in my place, my king, because I have had some troubling news. I know not whether to believe it, it is so odd, and so I was honor-bound to bring the word myself to you, and seek your guidance."

"Go on," said Eomer, frowning.

"Not ten days ago, raiders from Dunland came, and they burned a village before we got at them. Thirty-odd we killed, but one begged mercy, telling us that we faced a far greater threat."

Eomer and Aragorn exchanged a wary glance. What now, after the Shadow had fallen? "Speak quickly, Helmsgaard!"

"The Dunlandings came through Fangorn Forest—odd enough, but common when hunger has driven them mad. But our prisoner told us that his fellows sent an advance party ahead, and all of them, to a man, had been slaughtered."

"This is no mystery," Aragorn replied. "Many Ents came to Isengard, and there they remain guarding Saruman and Grima Wormtongue. But others stayed in the Forest. Perhaps they chose not to suffer the Dunlandings in their domain."

"Indeed, my lord, that is what I thought. But the Dunlanding said no: the men were slaughtered by sword, and others had fallen full of arrows. Uruk-hai arrows, he claimed."

"Uruk-hai in Fangorn!" Eomer exclaimed. "I don't suppose he brought one of these arrows along to prove his wild claim?"

"He did not, my lord."

"And whatever Uruks had fallen on the advance party just allowed the second company to pass? It makes little sense, Helmsgaard," Aragorn said, shaking his head. "And let us not forget that what Uruk-hai remain are suffering from the loss of their Master, nor that the Ents would not countenance such foul creatures in Fangorn Forest!"

"Nonetheless," Eomer said heavily, "we must guard against them, though it is likely a lie told by a desperate, doomed man, though it is all but impossible. Helmsgaard, return to your post, but I want you to set a guard near the border of the forest, and have men ready to fight should the story prove true and these Uruk-hai enter the Mark. And when I return, I myself shall lead a company of men into the forest, to see what we might find."


	8. Chapter 8

For days now, Rakhan had been growing closer to Eolina and Gaelen. Because it seemed easier for the woman, Rakhan passed much of the time entertaining her active son. She could rest, and Rakhan wouldn't wear out his welcome. In the evenings, sometimes, he could see her peering discretely at him with dark mistrust. But sometimes Rakhan could creep up on her—a joy he took rarely, as it frightened her to turn around and see the big Uruk-hai watching her—and then he would see her caught in her sewing, or some other sedentary task, and she would be immersed in it and her lovely face would be at peace. She mended leather tunics with rough bone needles and sinew; she worked on fur leggings for the winter even though high summer approached. She cut fringes onto a pair of boots for her son, and carved spoons from a block of ash. One day he saw her carving nothing useful at all, but a rough, emerging horsehead.

She looked up then, forcing herself to meet his gaze. "What do you want?"

Rakhan gestured to the horse. "It's very good. I'm trying to figure out what it's for."

Eolina stared at him for a moment. Then she softened slightly, just enough for him to notice. "Doesn't your kind make crafts?"

"Well… swords, I was good at making swords. Important Men would come by Ise—that place—and sometimes they would need me to make shoes for their horses. Once I made a cage. But I've never made a thing that had no purpose at all."

"It has purpose," Eolina said calmly. "I am keeping my mind quiet, and practicing my skill, and remembering something I love. Both the horse, and the City of Edoras, where I would go to market. There are great horseheads, and running horses, carved into the support beams for the Golden Hall, and for the wealthier people's houses. And the regular people, Men like my father, would carve their signs over their doorways. This was also to let folks know who lived where, or what services they provided. My father was a wainwright, he made wagon-wheels mostly. But the smith… he hung horseshoes. There's a great living to be made in horseshoes alone."

Rakhan smiled. "So this is what I would be? A blacksmith, in your village?"

"_You_ would never be 'in my village'. Remember, they didn't even want me there."

Rakhan felt his emotions split: on one hand, he felt as if she had slapped him, which made no sense to the Uruk. At the same time, he wanted to wrap his arms around her. He shifted his weight uncomfortably.

"Tomorrow we will take a trip. If you wish, you may come, or you may stay here."

"A trip?"

"A little deeper into the forest, to gather honey."

"Honey… a luxury of Men. How will we get honey, steal it?"

"Of course not!"

"Trade for it? We will go among Men?"

For the first time, a hint of a smile pursed Eolina's lips. "You will see."

They set out early the next day, leaving their safe grove for the wilds of Fangorn. They took water sacks, flint and iron pyrite to start a fire, and a little jerky. Eolina rode her horse. Rakhan was surprised to see her shoulder a thin ash bow, bigger and more finely wrought that the one her son carried. Their quivers were full of arrows tipped with bright, multicolored feathers. Eolina was so proficient that she shot down a quail in mid-flight while cantering through a sunny clearing.

"You should have gone to war with the horse lords," Rakhan told her, grinning.

"I think I might have," Eolina told him. "But our people begin to train for their service at thirteen, and by thirteen I was Gaelen's mother, learning to live in the forest."

"No, nevermind," Rakhan said. "I am glad you never went, never saw it. I will go and run that bird down for you."

When he returned, the boy was impatient, having missed his own shot.

There was game everywhere. Rakhan could see a flock of pheasants rooting in the tall grass. Rakhan knelt down in the grass beside Gaelen. "Show me your shot. To that skinny young elm."

The boy obliged, and Rakhan told him, "Your problem is not aim, its strength. I'll give you exercises at the cave. Until then, let me see your arrow. That is… if we have a moment, Eolina?"

She nodded, curious.

Rakhan examined the arrow quickly. It was of sturdy make, tipped with bright yellow tailfeathers. He scratched at the string binding the arrows until it broke, releasing the feathers. Then he took out his knife, and after studying the shaft for a moment, made three slowly turning grooves. Finally Rakhan tied the feathers on again, over the grooves. He wet the tip of his finger on his tongue and smoothed the feathers as lightly as he could, and then handed the arrow back to Gaelen. "Now it will spin when it flies, and hit your mark harder and truer."

Gaelen examined his arrow with fascination. Rakhan stooped and picked up three rocks. He looked deep into the grass with his sharp eyes, seeing the birds who thought they were hidden, and then pelted the rocks at them. They took off in frantic flight, and Rakhan pointed to the sky. "Go on, quick!"

Gaelen shot of the arrow quickly and shaded his eyes with his hand, watching in excited anticipation. The arrow sliced through the bird and it dropped, and the boy cheered jubilantly. "Did you see, Mother? Did you see it?"

Rakhan laughed richly; the warmth of his laugh took Eolina by surprise. "Yes, I saw it. It was a good shot, Gaelen," she said, forcing herself not to see the Uruk-hai warrior.

"I am the Lord of Fangorn!" Gaelen proclaimed.

"You're a whelp," Rakhan laughed, losing himself in the joy of the moment. He swept the boy up and set him on his shoulders, and Gaelen squealed in delight.

Eolina swallowed hard, steadying herself. Rakhan—holding on tight to the boy's shins—met her eyes, a question in his: _Have I done wrong?_

She permitted herself a small smile. "Your honey awaits, Lord Gaelen. Can you see our tree from here, as tall as you are now?"

"I think I can, Mother!" the boy exclaimed. Rakhan grinned a little at his success, until a new thought rose in his mind: our tree?

"Soon you'll need to come down from your chariot and gather dried grasses for me," Eolina said. They crossed the clearing, and then Eolina told Gaelen to get down. Rakhan reached up and grabbed the child about the hips, swinging him playfully to the ground. The two went off and started pulling up the tall, dry grass, and Eolina had to look away from them, because for a moment they seemed like twins.

Rakhan handed over the grasses, surprised that Eolina jumped down from her horse and knotted the grasses together, and then set the grass torch on fire. It blazed for a moment; then Eolina blew it out and a great plume of smoke puffed up into the sky. She began to hobble towards the tree, where Rakhan now saw nasty stinging bees buzzing into a big hole in the oak's trunk.

"What are you doing? You'll hurt yourself, you'll hurt your ankle and they'll sting you! Let me help you walk at least!"

She shot a hard blue gaze over her shoulder. "I don't need your help, and you'll just scare the bees and get stung up."

Incredibly, Eolina used the smoldering torch to calm the bees. The smoke made them lazy, and Eolina took her chance to reach into the hive and pull out a large honeycomb. She made it only a few steps back before Rakhan ran to her side. "Let me carry you."

"I'm fine—"

"Your eyes are watering, and you're lying."

She sighed hard, and put out her arm. The most she would do was allow him to support her weight, and even this made her shiver. She was glad to be back at her horse. They wrapped the honey in leather and sat down to cook the birds. The rest of the day was full of Gaelen and Rakhan's laughter. Rakhan hoped that Eolina would be pleased, but she seemed ever more distressed. That night, at the cave, she waited for Gaelen to sleep; then she looked across the fire and warned Rakhan, "Gaelen has a good heart. You will make him love you. What then, when you leave him?"

"I don't want to leave him, Eolina."

"So you will stay with us forever?"

"Until you put me out, anyway."

She made a bitter hissing sound, and looked away furiously. "So, you put me in the position to break his heart!"

Rakhan stared at her, trying to understand. He had done as she wished and made the offering, and since then they had had a relative peace in the cave. It seemed that every step Rakhan took to get closer to Eolina, the more she ran away from him. How maddening it could be, if he let it anger him! "I don't want you to break his heart," Rakhan said. "And I won't hurt you. I wish you'd understand that. What more must I do?"

She closed her eyes, trying to be fair, trying to remember that he had done nothing to harm her. In fact, he had been a great help, hunting for them and keeping the cave up while she was injured. _He wasn't one of them_, she reminded herself. And then she wondered if she was going crazy, for could any Uruk-hai be different from the next? Eolina looked guiltily to her sleeping boy, the only soul who entered her cold heart, and knew the answer to that question. But still… She looked back at Rakhan, at the firelight reflecting in his green eyes. "You just keep to that promise, Rakhan. Don't you ever turn on me."

"Never," Rakhan said fiercely. "This is my life now."

Eolina nodded, and murmured, "I only wish I could believe you."

But the days rolled on, rich and warm and full of laughter that had long been missing in Eolina's life. By the time Eolina was walking on her own again, she was wondering if she might dare believe that Rakhan would keep his word. Gaelen certainly adored him, and he obviously adored Gaelen. Slowly her guard came down, and at midsummer she finally laughed aloud, a sound she hadn't made in years. She startled herself with it, and oddly enough Rakhan was the only one whose eyes she met, the only one who could possibly begin to imagine what she had gone through and what it was to learn to laugh again. She bowed her head subtly to him, the most thanks she could offer him.

From that moment on, Rakhan devoted himself to her smile, her laughter. There was nothing he wouldn't say or do to please her, but it was beginning to tear him apart.

With every rose-pink smile, with every musical laugh, and every sweep of her dark honey lashes, Rakhan knew that he desired Eolina more and more, so much he could feel it in his guts, so much that he couldn't sleep at night for imagining her body under his. He found himself turning his gaze away from her, because the physical ache was too much. It was a fire lit in him, and every day it burned a little hotter. And yet he knew, at the same time, that if he ever gave in to that overriding, desperate desire, he would lose his beauty forever.


	9. Chapter 9

"And so the trolls groaned and the chains rattled and the Black Gate was pulled open, and all our company marched out. And there they stood, a small glaring brightness—blinding white—in the distance. We could hear them screaming: Death! Death! shouted the Horsemen, We ride to wrath and ruin and death! And the Men of Gondor howled like Wraiths, and their wizard shone like the hot sun."

"Were you not afraid?" Gaelen asked, wide-eyed and breathless.

"No, little one, I did not care for life or death as I do now. For me it was only winning. And I would have been put to death for failing, so I am very glad my Master is gone. I wouldn't be here with you now, if he existed still."

"And what happened then? How were you defeated?"

Rakhan grinned. "I still don't know. Their king gave a great speech and his horse danced, and he held his great sword to the sky. The brilliant host charged _us_, as if they had given themselves up for dead already and sought only glory. I signaled my fellow commander across the field and we circled round them, and we had our trolls with us, as big as any tree and mad too. The earth shook under our feet, and once we were around them we closed in, trapping them. They fought all the more vicious for it, but we were defeating them. And then my Master—a terror and a great magician—burst from within and lit in flames, and his great tower fell, and a mighty wind blew against us. The ground opened beneath our feet and we ran, but the Men stood on firm land, and so the King of Gondor won the day, and the war."

"But what magic did he have, to defeat your Master so?"

"I told you, I don't know. It is a great mystery, but I am glad for it."

"Don't you miss your fellow soldiers? Did they die?"

Rakhan leaned back on his hands, considering it. "Some parts of my life, some soldiers, I miss, if that means I enjoyed them. Training, learning a new skill constantly: that is something I'd like to keep doing. And there was an armorer who was decent, he'd fix you up for free sometimes, if you had no meat to bring. He was an old Orc, probably my father, and he told good stories of long ago battles. I suppose I miss him, but I wouldn't want him around you or your mother."

"I will be a warrior," Gaelen decided. "I will kill bad Men who come to hurt beautiful Women like my mother, and protect the Forest. Will you teach me, Rakhan?"

Rakhan glanced at Eolina with a half-grimace of apology.

"Boys are all the same everywhere," she declared, smiling and laying down in the thick furs. He felt a wave of relief that she wasn't upset, or cold.

"Please?" Gaelen asked.

"I will make you a wooden sword, and teach you what to do with it. But only so you can protect your mother, and the Forest. Agreed?"

Gaelen stood up and flung his arms around Rakhan, and the Uruk-hai froze. He slowly pat the boy on the back. Rakhan had learned that physical affection was harder for him than mental understanding. An Uruk-hai might laugh with another, or avenge a fallen comrade's death; maybe, he would smack another warrior's shield, or crack shields, but never embrace or even shake hands. Rakhan's only contact with others had come from battle.

"You'll have to practice hard, and I won't make it easy for you," Rakhan added, and the boy backed away and nodded obediently. He lay down and stared into the fire, dreaming of trolls and swords.

Rakhan looked at Eolina. "Do you want to sword fight too?"

"I know how, a little. My brother and I used to play. He would be fourteen this year, I think. Probably joining the Riders. He will do well."

"What is a brother?" Gaelen asked, looking up to his mother.

"A brother is another child in the family, the mother's other child. I had one brother, Beolynd, and we would play and fight and look out for each other." Eolina turned to Rakhan and said, "You would be surprised how good two children of the Mark can be with their toy swords."

"I am warned," Rakhan joked easily.

"I want a brother," Gaelen said, pulling on Eolina's long sleeve.

Rakhan held his breath, and waited for it: that dull clouding of her eyes that happened when thought about what happened to her. She worked her lips a little, and then closed her eyes entirely for a moment. And then she got ahold of herself, so quickly, and leaned over to kiss her son on the brow. "You sleep now, my love. It is late."

Eolina stood up and fetched herself a cup of water. She stood before the fire with her hand on her hip and her back to Rakhan. Rakhan waited until the boy drifted to sleep, and then he said, "He'll forget he asked."

"No, no he won't. And really, what does he have? No family, nowhere to belong in the world… And no one to spend his days with, once I am gone. I would have had a big family, you know. Maybe five children, and a husband, and then grandchildren, all around my hearth. Gaelen has the deer and the birds."

Rakhan remained silent; he didn't trust his voice. He didn't trust his breath.

She turned around, eyes shining with tears. And then she smiled. "But we are happy enough here. I am wrong to complain, when it could have been so much worse for me and Gaelen. And… He is happy with you here, Rakhan. I have to say, you have been good to him. I am grateful."

Rakhan shook his head; she had nothing to be grateful for! "He's a smart, strong boy. I'm glad to know him, and I'll teach him anything you'll let me. He will be the Lord of Fangorn in truth one day."

Eolina smiled, but the sorrow was heavy in her eyes. Rakhan took a deep breath and then asked, "You want many children?"

Startled that he brough the unpleasant subject back, Eolina said abruptly, "That was a dream of another life. That's lost to me, and I have accepted it. I couldn't— It doesn't matter anymore."

She sat down beside him and pushed around the flaming coals of her fire. "We are both in a place we'd never thought to be. We have to make the best of things, and not feel sorry for ourselves."

"I don't," Rakhan said quietly. He stared at the fire, willing the courage that had once seemed as plentiful as air to him. "I think it is a good life here, away from the world. I think it is beautiful. And I think—I think that if you want another child... We have all we need here, we are happy, and there is room in this life for another boy, a boy like Gaelen."

Rakhan held his breath as Eolina sat perfectly still, almost frozen. Then she pressed her hands over her mouth and ran out of the cave. Rakhan knew she hadn't gone far, she was too fearful for that at night. In fact, he could hear her breathing just outside. Rakhan wondered how long it would be before she told him to go—what had he been thinking? He looked over Gaelen's sleeping form and shut his eyes tight, wondering why he had destroyed his only chance at happiness.

A moment later she appeared in the mouth of the cave, her arms clutched over her chest. He looked up at her warily, and she met his gaze steadily, and then nodded her head. "I think you're right. I think we should. I think—for some reason known only to Eru—that you came to me here for a reason. You are my only chance to live again."

A night earlier in a poor village nearest the forest, one just spared burning by Helmsgaard's vigilance, Lathga the One-Eyed had decided he had had enough of his wife's nagging mouth. She did nothing but eat and scold, and now it was put around the village that Lathga's slow-witted son might not be his at all, but the son of that fat-lipped butcher down the row. Whatever consolation that might have brought was wiped out by the insult to his manhood, and so when he returned from the tavern that night, with the mid-summer festivals still raging loud and merry, he methodically beat his wife to death.

But murder was a hanging offense in the Mark, wife or not. And his wife had lots of kin, big strapping men who had gone off to war and returned swaggering and boasting of glorious deeds. So Lathga spent the following day gloating over his wife's bloated corpse, and then, once dark fell, he wrapped her body in a blanket, loaded it into his cart, and drove to the edge of Fangorn Forest.

Eomer's patrols had begun, and no villager could fail to notice the golden-helmed Riders doing their diligence. Rumors of Uruk-hai spread like a barnfire through the outlying villages, and though the patrols turned up nothing everyone was sure that it was only a matter of time before the beasts showed themselves again.

Lathga figured they could make an appearance tonight. He rolled his wife's body out of the cart and dumped it into a ditch at the edge of the Forest, for Lathga was too scared to enter its blackness. For good measure he picked up his wife's skirts, because that's what real Uruks would do.

And then he went home and scrubbed his house by moonlight, and lay down in bed, preparing his story for the morning.


	10. Chapter 10

Rakhan wasn't sure what to do. Eolina had put Gaelen to sleep on a new bed of his own, a mat of leather covered with a warm fur, and gone down to the stream to bathe. Following her example he washed himself up: it seemed her kind did that beforehand. He set the heavy armor that he always wore aside, and stripped off his long tunic and undergarment, and laid it all in a neat pile by the bed. Already he was dizzy: his heart was galloping like her horse, he could hear it beating in his ears. _I will not hurt her,_ he repeated to himself, again and again. _And I won't scare her_, he thought, and so he climbed into her bed and pulled the furs up to his broad chest, hiding the pertinent, already aroused parts of his powerful body. Each moment was an agony of waiting, and the longer she took the more anxious Rakhan became. _I will _not_ throw myself on her when she comes back! _ But what _was_ the proper way to go about it? Rakhan had no idea. And his stomach was churning over what might happen if it was too sweet, and he lost control.

Then she returned. Rakhan looked up and almost swooned. Eolina stood in the mouth of the cave, her golden hair spilling down to her hips, a wrap of wolf-fur clutched close around her. But her shoulders were nearly bare, and Rakhan thought he might go half mad knowing that she was naked beneath the silvery fur.

Eolina was a stubborn woman, and once she had set her mind on a course of action she clung to it, no matter how terrified she was now. She crossed the cave and knelt down on her bed, but even though she was determined to do this, her hands acted independent of her will, clinging to the fur and holding it fast around her body. She took a deep breath and said, "Don't expect much. I'm not like you think I might be."

Rakhan, hearing the tremor and sadness in her voice, sat up. "I don't know what you're saying. What else can you be but yourself?"

"No," she breathed. "I mean, I'm not beautiful anymore, I just want you to be prepared."

"_You_ are saying this to _me?_ You couldn't look at me for the full turn of a moon." Rakhan grinned.

Eolina shook her head slowly, thinking that he was not ugly at all. He had strong, straight features balanced by a thick jaw and strong, high cheekbones. His eyes were bright, and now Eolina saw laughter in their deep green depths; she saw Rakhan, not merely a member of his cursed race. "I couldn't see you because of what you are, not what you look like. You're not bad to look at."

"I know that," he told her, trying to stay light no matter how desperate he felt. "I used to get beat for it when I was new to the world, they called me pretty fetch and sweet meat and I had to watch who I slept around, and keep my eyes open."

Eolina nodded, thinking that enough words had been said, and she was afraid that the longer she delayed, the more her resolve would crumble. Rakhan had offered her a chance to have something like a normal life, and to give Gaelen a future, and she was not about to let her own fears ruin that. To Eolina, sex was a mechanical thing, an unpleasant but necessary payment for the blessing of a child and a family for her beloved son. A year ago she would never have considered it, but Rakhan's kindness, his unexpected gentle behavior, assured Eolina that he would not take advantage of her. Still, she was terrified, and she hoped that the deed itself would be quick and forgettable.

She drew a deep breath, and let the fur go, and then she closed her eyes to spare herself his reaction. She wanted no pity, and she surely couldn't face his contempt after experiencing the revulsion and loathing of her family and neighbors.

Rakhan's excitement froze when he saw what they had done to her. The scar on her neck was nothing. All over her body were scars: slashes from deliberately shaped sharp claws, raw ugly patches where some savage, passion mad warrior had bitten at her flesh. He couldn't believe that once he had been depraved enough to do the same, to wantonly destroy a beautiful thing, because it would have passed for entertainment in his brutish, miserable life.

But not beautiful? Rakhan was thrown down by her beauty, he was terrified of it, and now, since he was free, he wanted her all to himself. It wasn't that he was kind enough to look past the scars, but that he was them as just a part of her. She was slender—he would have to be even _more_ careful now—but shapely, with full deep breasts and a shining body of cream touched with pink and gold. Did she not know how she appeared to him, bright and brilliant and clean? His reached for her and then checked himself. "Can I touch you?"

"I suppose you'd have to," Eolina said, taking a cautious look at him. That warm, slightly bewildered look was on Rakhan's face again, and she knew that he didn't find her so hideous as a Man might; and she was glad. She laughed a little, knowing that it sounded forced. "I know of no other way to make a baby, or surely I'd try that way before this one."

Rakhan let himself laugh a little, but he could taste her now; he could taste her in the air around him as he slid closer. He wanted her so badly he didn't know where to start, like a starving soldier at a rich banquet paralyzed by the question of which delicacies he would try first. Her shimmering golden hair caught his eye, and he took some of it in his hand, and it was even softer and finer than he had thought. Rakhan grew bolder, and lightly ran his hands down her arms, sighing to have her at last. But when he took her heavy breast in his hands she shivered and pulled away.

"No?" Rakhan murmured, his voice lower than the crackling of the fire.

"Wait—just…" Eolina shook her head, ashamed that she had tears in her eyes. "Will you do something for me?"

"Anything. I'd die for you right now, happily."

"Kiss me," she implored him quietly. "When a woman is married, and gone to bed for the first time, the husband always kisses her. It means he loves her, he adores her, he'll be kind to her… I would feel better if you—But only if you wanted to—"

"Show me."

Eolina got up on her knees and gently lay her hands on Rakhan's face, and the Uruk-hai warrior felt the cracking of his heart at this touch. Her warm mouth covered his and he sighed with delight. He slid his strong hands over her face, plunged them into her hair, ran them over her throat. His touch was tender and wildly possessive at the same time, a touch Eolina never thought she would have from anyone. She had once thought that Rakhan couldn't know love, couldn't give it; now his hands told her the truth. She lay back on soft furs and he followed her down, enveloping her in his heavily muscled arms. Rakhan kissed Eolina again. "I…I _love_ you," he whispered, trying the word out, finding that it fit. He kissed her again. "I adore you, I will be kind to you," he murmured, placing a third soft kiss on her warm rose lips.

Eolina gasped at the words she never thought she would hear spoken to her. She closed her eyes as Rakhan kissed the tears on her cheeks. She had thought to surrender her body alone, but suddenly Eolina found that it was her heart opening to Rakhan, as he brushed his mouth tenderly over her scarred body and swore that he would protect her forever. She melted into his hands.

And then she felt his spear along her thigh, enormous and hot and iron-hard. Eolina froze, gripped with nauseas fear. A Man might have gone on, but Rakhan sensed the change in her instantly. Her body cringed beneath him, and sour fear scented the air. "What is it?" he asked quietly, smoothing her golden hair back from her brow. "What happened?"

Too ashamed to look at him, Eolina closed her eyes and whispered, "Don't hurt me."

"Lina, little Lina," Rakhan said, for he was no fool. He had thought enough about it, how they might mate without blood and violence when she was so much smaller, so easily torn apart. "I will be slow and careful, and you will get used to me."

And then he had a thought, and he slipped his hand over her flat, smooth stomach, glad that he taken to keeping this nails trimmed like Gaelen's. The sight of his big dark hand on her white belly was intoxicating, and Rakhan flashed on an image of himself digging roughly inside her. _Easy,_ he told himself, even though his breath shuddered as his hand brushed over her soft sex. She gave a little gasp as Rakhan pushed a finger inside her. _I'm going to die right now,_ Rakhan thought, slowly stroking her deeper as the throbbing in his member became brutal. She was tight and hot and silky, and Rakhan had never had a woman before some Uruk or Lesser Orc, never had one who wasn't already shredded and bloody and ruined.

He watched her face desperately. Her eyes were wide with surprise that he should do such a thing. After a few moments her eyes fluttered shut, and her lips trembled, and a soft sigh escaped her. "Why—why are you doing—that…"

"Do you want me to stop?"

"Oh no…" she breathed. Eolina had missed the age among young women when such things were whispered about, and she had no idea that there could be pleasure in the act. It washed through her gently, sweetly.

He was stunned to feel a slick wetness rush over his fingers; at the same time, Eolina whimpered and pressed her body against his, shivering as Rakhan's strong, gentle hand brought her to her first climax. He understood intuitively and withdrew his wet fingers, resisting the powerful urge to lick them. Then he shifted his weight and grabbed his thick, heavy member. He pushed the swollen tip of it against her damp hot sex. He let her feel him, then he met her gaze. Dazzled with pleasure, Eolina nodded.

Pleasure mixed with sharp, burning pain as Rakhan pushed inside her. Eolina bit down on her fingertips to muffle her cries. Rakhan could move but agonizingly slowly, stretching her tight body open bit by bit when all he wanted to do was pound himself into her until he exploded and filled her with his dark seed. He almost lost himself as wave after wave of ecstasy flooded him with every tiny bit he eased inside of her. Rakhan dug his fingers into the fur blanket and twisted it in his hand. Delicious darkness lapped at the back of his mind, asking him why he should wait for his pleasure when the woman was all but laid open beneath him, powerless to stop the assault.

Rakhan felt Eolina's cool hands press against his cheeks. She whimpered a little, pleadingly, and pulled his face down to hers, unknowingly drawing Rakhan out of his darkness. He exhaled a shaky breath and kissed her mouth, more fiercely now, pushing her lips apart and tasting her. With a final shove that was perhaps a little too hard, Rakhan buried himself to the hilt inside her, her cries echoing in his ears. He wrapped her tightly in his arms. "I've got you," he murmured in her ear, more to remind himself than anything else.

Eolina held his gaze, a blend of raw fear and naked trust in her eyes. But as he dug slowly in her, rolling his hips, filling her mercilessly and completely yet with such impossibly tender restraint, the frozen hurt in her heart began to dissolve. It wasn't that she had no pain—it would take time to get accustomed to such a large, powerful partner. It was that she felt precious. She was no longer a hunted, tormented girl; nor a foul, defiled, degraded young woman. In Rakhan's strong arms Eolina became treasured. She held his face in her broken hands and saw his fierce, rugged beauty. She saw the battle in his eyes, the determination to be gentle, to honor her. Eolina cried new tears, grateful and relieved and utterly content. "You are my mate," she whispered. "You are my love."

Rakhan shuddered as he came hard inside her, a long, ecstatic release as he had never felt in Isengard. The slightest of movements set it all off again, a flood of power and passion that left him weak and breathless. Her words played over and again in his heart: _my mate, my love. _When he could breathe again he withdrew himself—even that made Eolina gasp—and bundled her into his arms. There were no words to be said between them as they wound their legs together and their fingers clasped. Eolina lay her head on Rakhan's chest and let the beating of his heart lull her. Rakhan looked down on her golden hair and sweet face, and knew he had found paradise.

The River Entwash was swift and full of rapids where it came down from the mountain, but by the time it neared the plain it was broad and slow. Rakhan stood behind Eolina in the river, their hands touching on a stout wooden spear with Rakhan's knife making the point. Little fish, unaware swam up to nibble at their still bare feet, but they were waiting something bigger. Soon enough a thick rainbow trout cruised past. Rakhan murmured in Eolina's ear: "One, two, three!"

Eolina stabbed the spear at the fish but it was too swift for her, darting away into the blackness of the water. Eolina laughed, "I'm terrible!"

"Keep trying, Mother!" Gaelen called, as he hunted skipping stones on the bank.

"I really can't. Rakhan, we shall starve if you leave this to me."

"If I can go in the water—and I hate broad rivers, I'd sink like a stone—then you can learn to fish."

"You can't swim?" Eolina asked in surprise.

"Not a stroke. Hush now," he said playfully. "You are scaring the fish away on purpose."

Truthfully, he just enjoyed standing so close to her, pressed up against her back and inhaling her sweet hair, which astonishingly she had left down and flowing for once. The day was perfect, warm and bright even in the Forest, and Rakhan had woken up with Eolina in his arms. She'd been a little sore, a little nervous as her eyes opened, but Rakhan's firm grasp comforted her and she knew she had finally put her terror behind her. She knew that he loved her, even with all she'd lived through and bore the scars of. And maybe, if the Graces allowed, she would have another baby. Perhaps even several more children!

They speared a fish together and Eolina's laughter sparkled like sunlight. "Go and find some firewood," she told her son. "We'll eat here before we go back. Maybe Rakhan will let me teach him to swim, now that he has taught me to fish with a spear."

Rakhan shook his head adamantly. He jumped in surprise to feel Eolina's small hand snake over his, grasping his fingers and leading him out of the water. "I made something for you," she said. He was entranced by her shapely calves lifting out of the water, and the water running off like jewels. He hardly heard her.

Eolina pulled a braided leather cord off her neck, sliding it down her golden hair. "It's just something simple…"

Rakhan grinned, and she slipped it over his head. "I've made nothing for you," he told her.

"Oh, it's my hope that you did," Eolina told him mischievously, and Rakhan laughed when he understood. He was compelled to squeeze her hand. _A son_, he thought, _a son of my own. _

Far away, there was a sound like thunder.

Snared up in each other, Rakhan and Eolina didn't hear it at first. And there were always strange sounds in the forest. But when Rakhan sat down, he felt the softest of tremors in the ground, and it struck a deep memory in him. "Eolina… run."

He stood up, pulling her hand.

"What?"

"Run!" Rakhan shouted, wishing more than anything that he hadn't left his armor in the cave. What had possessed him? At least he had his weapons!

"What is it?" Eolina demanded, standing and running along beside him. She glanced around the forest for her son, and a hard wave of nausea passed over her when she didn't see him. Only then did her own senses catch it: the sound of many horses bearing down, the sound of an Eored. "Gaelen!" she screamed, gripping Rakhan's hand.

A moment later they saw the gold flashing in the rare sunbeams pouring into the Forest. And then fifty horsemen bore down on them, their spears pointed low.

There was nowhere else to run. Rakhan grabbed Eolina and shoved her behind him, and stood furious as the Horsemen surrounded him.


	11. Chapter 11

The Riders hemmed them in with spears. Eolina grabbed Rakhan's black shirt tightly, willing him to stay quiet. The Riders sat tall and grim-faced, with pale shining hair hanging from their gold-worked helms. In the center was King Eomer, but Eolina did not know him, and he wore no special insignia to set him over the brothers of his Eored: in truth, they held him in such high esteem that he needed nothing save the force of his person to rule.

Ten men dismounted, drew swords, and marched three paces towards Rakhan. Eolina knew in an instant that they didn't mean to stop, and now she leaped before him and threw her hands up. "Wait!" she cried, "We've broken no laws!"

They were deaf to her. With lightning reflexes, the man furthest to the left grabbed Eolina by her hands and bundled her back into the bristle of spears. The moment he touched her Rakhan drew his sword and swung. A blood-chilling wail tore from Eolina's belly as ten Men attacked her new husband.

Her scream pushed Rakhan to a violence he had never known, not even in Mordor. He took the first four men down with deft strokes, plowing through them. He refused to let his enemies attack him; he singled each one out and struck him down with brutal slashes, throwing all of his weight into the blows. Two men lay on the ground, their legs severed. Another was decapitated. A fourth run through. Rakhan felt a slash in his back, burning in his side, and his growl of rage would have unmanned a lesser warrior. But these men were Riders of the King's Eored.

Eolina twisted hard and slammed her palm into her captor's nose, breaking it. She wrenched away from him and ran into the fray, and threw her arms around Rakhan. "Stop!" she screamed, to all of them, including her beloved. Rakhan gripped her hard with one arm, but kept his sword in the air. Eolina could feel the blood leaking down his back.

"King's Justice!" Eolina screamed. "I demand the King's Justice!" She was sobbing then, because she knew Gaelen would have seen the fight, and like the good boy he was he would have run away. Once he reached the grove he would be safe. But he would have to hunt for himself now: either if they killed her on the spot, or took her to Edoras to see the new king.

"Who are you to demand justice of our king?" Helmsgaard demanded.

"My name is Eolina, my father Beogrim the Wainwright of the village Thunder Hill, in the Westmark. And I demand justice of my king for this assault!"

Several of the men laughed in contempt, but Eomer remained silent and grave. He hated the foul Uruks but there was something odd at work. The woman clung to the Uruk like a lover—and perhaps she was a sick, evil creature—but what tormented Eomer is that the _Uruk_ held her as well, and there was something fiercely protective about his entire conduct. Nonetheless, four of his men were dead or dying.

"I am King Eomer!" he proclaimed, and the woman's eyes widened. She did not let go of the Uruk—she was defending him, knowing that the men of the Eored would be loathe to strike down a woman—but she dipped her head deeply, and would not raise her eyes again. Her long honey-gold hair fell before her face, and every man in the company had a fierce flash of desire to kill the Uruk-hai for having such an intimate grasp on such a lovely young woman, one of their own.

"You demand my justice, and according to our customs you shall have it. Tell your Uruk to lay down his sword."

Eolina looked up into Rakhan's eyes. He shook his head slightly, imploringly. The white-faces would kill them. Rakhan wasn't enough of a fool to think he could mate one of their women and live long after being discovered. And they would surely kill Eolina too, especially if—Rakhan felt the life run out of him. What if she was pregnant already? He gazed into her eyes, miserable.

She put her small, broken hand to his face. "We have to _try_," she whispered. "My people are not unjust. Let us explain ourselves to King Eomer, why shouldn't he show us mercy?"

"The Men on the ground are worth more to him than me, or justice for me," Rakhan told her quietly.

"You were attacked," Eolina murmured swiftly. "Rakhan, please… I trusted you last night. Can you trust me? What choice do we have? They will kill us here, both of us."

Rakhan grit his jaw. His eyes flickered up to King Eomer's. There was nothing but bright fire in the king's expression, and hatred pouring off his men. But Eolina was right. How could they fight on? Rakhan didn't care if he died; he hardly felt his injuried with the anger pumping in his blood. But if they hurt Eolina, it would be far worse than any torture they could put him to.

"Give me the sword," Eolina pleaded.

Rakhan kept a hard stare on the Riders, but he put his sword into Eolina's small hands. Anything to buy another moment of her life.

"I surrender this sword with faith in your honor, King of the Mark!" Eolina called, and she threw the sword to the ground, and raised her face to her king, still clutching at her Uruk. He could see her desperate courage, and it was both a riddle to the king and a benefit to the woman. Whatever the case was, she was brave.

King Eomer looked the strange pair over for a moment. Then he glanced over his fallen men and ordered, "Bind them. Helmsgaard take the woman Eolina on your horse. The Uruk can run with us. Serrick, you hold his rope, and choose four men to guard him. We ride for Edoras!"

Gaelen wandered in agony through the Forest, crying silently, seeing nothing. The sight of his mother taken away on a Man's horse replayed in his mind over and over again, and Gaelen was sure he would never see her again. And he had seen a sword hit Rakhan's back, and the Men drive him cruelly off. Gaelen had tried to follow at first but it was hopeless. The horses were just too fast for him.

What could he do? He wanted more than anything to get his bow from the cave, and Wingfoot, and follow their tracks. He wanted to rescue his mother and Rakhan, who he already considered his father. But he was only a little more mature than a son of Men would be at his age, and the task was daunting. Yet how could he just _let_ them take his mother and father away?

Gaelen swept his tears out of his eyes with rough hands. He would just have to take care of himself, and hope that Rakhan could fight his way home. And his mother seemed to save Rakhan, and challenge the Men. Maybe she would find a way!

Suddenly Gaelen froze. There was an odd scent in the air, unlike anything he had ever smelled. His heart began to pound and he clutched at his skipping stones, knowing that his aim was true. And then he heard voices, in the tongue his mother called "common" and insisted that he spoke sometimes.

"Aye, for sure it is a proud sight, but you will see marvels yet, wrought by living hands and eyes of true vision! And there we will not drink water but the sweetest of meads!"

"I've no taste for such things. The water of the Entwash is pure and clean, and grants life rather than sleep."

"Life! Why there isn't a soul around!"

Terrified, Gaelen peered around a thick tree. Two creatures unlike any he had ever seen were only moments away from discovering him. One was tall and fair, and even more frightening almost shimmering in the dim light. The other was not much taller than Gaelen himself but wide as a horse and carrying heavy, sharp axes. _Rakhan would be brave!_ Gaelen thought, and he jumped out before the strangers and pelted them with his stones, then turned and ran as fast as he could.


	12. Chapter 12

"Quit squirming, you devil-imp!" Gimli growled, hooking his thick arms through the young Uruk-hai's.

Gaelen was as a wild animal. His mother had taught him gentle manners but this summer he had learned that Others—except Rakhan—were always bad. He bit like a wolf cub and kicked like a donkey, and for the first time in his life his throat gave off a furious Uruk growl.

"Legolas, this one's small but he is what he is! If he wants to fight, then I shouldn't hold back!"

"No!" Legolas' fine features worked into a thoughtful frown, and he squatted down before the boy. His brilliant, ethereal blue gaze swept over Gaelen and he told Gimli, "He's not the same at all. If you quit your fighting, Young One, we won't harm you. But you may not throw stones at us, do you understand?"

"Why _shouldn't _I?" Gaelen spat. "They took my mother and my new father away! You are probably bad too!"

Legolas and Gimli both drew back in shock. They knew very well how Uruk-hai came into existence—seeing a young one had been as much of a surprise to them as it had to Rakhan. "Who took them?" Legolas asked.

Tears flooded Gaelen's eyes. "The Men on horses! We were fishing in the river and I went for firewood and—" The little boy's voice broke, and he couldn't say anymore. He was ashamed to cry before these strangers, and no matter how hard he bit his lip in trembled.

Gimli and Legolas exchanged unspoken words, and the Dwarf asked, "Have you had anything to eat?"

"I don't want to eat! I want to find Mother and Rakhan!"

"First things first," Legolas said.

Gaelen looked up, stunned. The bright creature was going to help him. It was as if he could read what was inside of him, it, whatever the creature was.

Surprised, Legolas tilted his head. He looked curiously at the little Uruk and thought, _it couldn't be._

"I know what they looked like," Gaelen said. "And I have a horse—Well, Wingfoot is Mother's horse."

"You speak the Rohirric tongue?" Legolas asked. Another surprise…

"Better than this one, but Mother made me practice. The Horsemen had bright shiny hair like Mother. I will know them when I see them. And their tracks are fresh. You will help me, won't you? You are good, not bad?"

Gimli arched a thick eyebrow. Legolas shook his head a little in wonder, that after all the War and the Quest, they should be asked by Grace to help a baby Uruk-hai.

Edoras had no large dungeon like Minas Tirath, for there was very little crime that needed it. Men who did murder were likely to fall under the axe of their victim's family member, unless they paid the weregeld or invoked the king's protection. Lathga the One-Eyed thought of this every time he sat in the village beer hall. Today he felt better, for the news had come to his village on the swift messenger horse from Edoras: an Uruk-hai had been caught in Fangorn, and with a woman no less! Lathga did as any proper widower should: he packed up some gear and loaded his cart, and made for Edoras to see justice done for his wife.

King Eomer confined Rakhan to one of the small lonely cells dug into the hillside beneath the Golden Hall. Helmsgaard brough a struggling Eolina up to the king. The woman's blue eyes were flashing with anger and a rose flush high on her cheeks. "My lord, they are taking him away!"

"On my orders, Mistress Eolina. And you shall come along with us. Helmsgaard, take her to my sister's old chambers, and lock the door. I shall send a maid to attend you, Eolina, have no fear."

"Why are you imprisoning me then?" she demanded, but King Eomer strode ahead of her, up the wide wooden staircase.

"For questioning, wench," Helmsgaard muttered. "What do you think?"

"But we've broken no law," Eolina said coldly, even though her knees were weak from fear.

"Is that how you call it?" the Man snorted in disgust.

"I will have justice," Eolina said, but it sounded more of a plea.

"There's no justice for _his_ kind, nor for any filthy wench who lies down with one!"

Eolina balked and panicked more with every step. The Man's grasp on her arm was rough and careless and her mind flashed cruelly back and forth to Isengard, dragged along by her tormenters. Helmsgaard opened a gilded door and tossed her in as if she was filth indeed, and locked the door behind her. Eolina collapsed to her knees and sobbed.


	13. Chapter 13

The light had changed by the time a woman opened the thick wooden door, entering Eolina's luxurious prison. The maid was a sociable, darker-haired matron from a good fighting family who was slightly scandalized by the story she had been told of the woman and the Uruk. But she was more scandalized to see a pretty girl of no more than seventeen or eighteen sitting on the bare floor beneath the window, crying as if her heart were broken.

"Breyda's my name, Miss," she said, bring over a tray with a bowl of hot soup, a hunk of warm crusty bread, and a cup of ale. "Won't you come and sit at the table? Have a bite to eat?"

Receiving no reply, Breyda put the tray down and went to sit by Eolina. "It will be all right, surely Miss. Eomer King will be fair like his uncle Theoden. He wouldn't harm a woman."

Eolina turned hollow, agonized eyes on Breyda. _My son is out there,_ Eolina thought. _My baby is alone in the Forest and my Rakhan is wounded and imprisoned. What can you know of harm?_

"You need a little food now—"

"He needs a healer!" Eolina cried. "If the king is fair, tell him Rakhan needs his wounds cleaned and bound!"

"Beg your pardon, Miss—Rakhan? Is that the… the _Uruk?_"

Eolina covered her face and wept harder. The Rohirrim would never understand it; they would probably condmen Rakhan die _for_ what had happened between them in the cave! _Just last night, we were so happy…_ She rocked in horror, thinking of how his hands had made her feel, and the sweet, half-naïve half-fierce words he had whispered to her as they'd made love. How softly his lips had brushed over her scars, as if he was working some magic to undo the damage, at least in Eolina's soul. And these people—her own people—would kill him for it.

"Get him a healer!" Eolina moaned through her hands. "If there's any heart in you, any heart in the king, get him a healer, please, please, before it's too late…"

Breyda, now weeping herself, ran from the room. "My king," she murmured, dropping a curtsy before Eomer, who waited down the hall anxiously.

"Why the tears in your eyes, Breyda? Did she strike you?"

"Oh, no, my lord! She is the most wretched girl I've ever set eyes on. She begs you send a healer to the Uruk, who she called Rakhan. She is weeping her eyes out for him, it's the just saddest thing, for all as strange and distasteful as it is."

Eomer recalled that the Uruk had been cut twice, a sword to his back and side. He had likely left a trail of black blood through the city. It would look odd to his people to send a healer to an Uruk—could he even find one?—but it could do no harm. Eomer wasn't even sure yet to do with the enemy, as peculiar as he had been over the woman. The Uruk had behaved like a Man defending his wife, and now the woman wailed for him. Still, that did not mean the Uruk was innocent. He had viciously killed members of Eomer's own Eored, and perhaps a village woman as well. "I will send him a healer," Eomer decided, "but that doesn't mean I won't execute him. He is an enemy to my kind, whatever dark path that woman has taken."

Finding a healer was not such a problem, as it turned out. None of the court physicians would go, nor the midwives and wise women of the city. But Eomer quickly found a burly butcher who had a side trade in patching up wounded livestock, and once assured the Uruk would be chained, and he compensated with a gold coin, readily agreed.

Eomer was surprised, though, to face hostile opinion amongst his own court and officers. They demanded none too humbly why their young new king would minister to a beast.

"The better to try him for his crimes," Eomer declared, thinking that ought to be an end to it.

"Why try him at all?" one of the older members of the Eored barked up. "He's an Uruk! Let me go down into the gaol and cut off his head."

Cheers rang around the room, and Eomer felt hot with anger at the sudden dissent. It was his first time since talking taking up his uncle's place that he had felt the disapproval of his people.

"The Uruk is not alone! The Eorlinga has called on the King's Justice and claimed protection for her companion, and she will have it, or what else separates us from that accursed kind?"

"It is a trick!" Serrick called out. He was standing beside Helmsgaard, who remained silent. "How can we trust such a woman? How can we still call her one of our own? She should have our justice, in the form of a noose, to show other women what we think of her sickness!"

"Enough!" Eomer shouted, pacing anxiously around the dais. "We will question them both, and the woman at least will account for herself before this Hall. Yet we must wait for the widower to arrive, and I shall summon this father she claims, Beogrim Wainwright of Thunder Hill. But for now the prisoners will be treated according to our ancient custom!"

The new king whipped his gaze around the room, seeking a challenge, and then he strode out.

Eolina jolted awake when the heavy door opened the next morning, her eyes red and ragged from crying herself to sleep. The red haired warrior Helmsgaard stood in the doorway, his blue eyes hard with contempt. "You will answer for yourself before the king within the hour, wench. Breyda: bring water for the woman to wash with. Though I doubt all the waters of the Entwash would be enough to make her clean again!"

Eolina shot him a hateful glare, and Helmsgaard shook his head darkly and spun away. The maid hurried to her duties, returning with a pitcher of water and a basin. Eolina splashed water into her face and quickly braided her hair up. There was nothing to do about her clothing; she would have to appear before King Eomer filthy. Rakhan's black blood stained the sleeves of her tunic, ripping at her heart each time she saw it. She would not let herself consider if he had made it through the night. Eolina thought she would die if he hadn't. Eolina whispered a prayer to Eru Iluvatar that they had sent a healer to him.

Helmsgaard returned within the hour, growling to Eolina to come along. He seized her arm again and made to drag her, and Eolina demanded that he release her. "I can walk well enough on my own, my lord! I am glad to go before the king, and I hope his heart is more noble than yours!"

"You revolt the king," Helmsgaard spat.

There was no sense arguing with him. Eolina thought to save her words for her audience with the king. But she was horrified to see, when Helmsgaard led her into the Golden Hall, that there were dozens and dozens of eager Eorlingas come to witness her suffering. How could she speak before all of them?

Helmsgaard dragged her before the dais. A collective gasp of shock rolled through the room at her youth and fair looks; they had expected her obvious depravity to show in her face. Eolina refused to look at them, staring ahead to the empty throne.

King Eomer hurried down the hall with his captains. "Any word back on the father, this Beogrim Wainwright?"

"Dead at Helm's Deep," Serrick reported. "But Lathga One-Eye is here to speak for his dead wife. He wants justice done."

"Assuming this Uruk is the same that killed her," Eomer said tightly. "I've no proof of that either."

Serrick could hardly contain his appalled reaction. "My lord, whether this Uruk or that, all are killers! If I were you, I would put iron to that beast and make him tell where the rest of his accursed kin are hiding!"

"But you are _not_ king, Serrick! And we are not torturers."

Two guards pushed the doors open, and King Eomer entered the chamber. The woman was already before his throne, her lovely face full of misery. She crumpled into a bow. Breyda had told him that the woman had wept herself to sleep over the Uruk. Reports from the gaol master told that the Uruk was in no better form, laying on the floor of his cell and refusing water. Now, Eomer would find out how this had come about. He took his throne, glancing to the eager one-eyed widower given a place of honor in the front row of the court. Then he spoke, and his voice was cold and strong.

"Eolina, daughter of Beogrim, you have been brought before this court to answer charges of collusion with the enemies of Rohan. How do you answer?"

She raised her eyes and said clearly, "Not guilty, my lord."

"Then what were you doing with the Uruk?"

"He is not an enemy!" Eolina protested, and the crowd roared with shock and anger. Eolina shook with fear, wishing for a chair before she fainted from fear. "His name is Rakhan, and he is an Uruk-hai, but the war is over. All we desire is to live in peace! We've harmed no one, we were only fishing when the Eored ran down on us!"

The crowd was against her, and now a man called out, "Harmed no one? No one? What about my poor wife, violated and beaten to death!"

"_What?_ My lord—" Eolina shook her head violently, "—if this man has lost his wife I am sorry for it, but Rakhan and I are innocent!"

"Perhaps you may be, Mistress," Eomer said gently, for he took pity on the young woman who was the object of such wrath. "But can you say for sure that the Uruk you were fishing with did not commit this violence? She was discovered in death the night before."

"Yes, I know it for a fact my lord, as he was with me. We have our own place to live, deep in the Forest."

The court gasped again, imagining every salacious detail.

"You live with this creature?" Eomer asked, trying diligently to keep his own disgust down.

"We live in peace, my lord," Eolina said, tears falling. "And I give my word for Rakhan. He has done no harm, nor does he wish to. He was a slave, good king, and now that the Darkness is fallen, he is free to choose his own path, and he has chosen the path of peace. He would not have attacked your men had they not come at him, and when they grabbed me, he thought they meant to hurt me… He was only protecting me."

Eomer could hardly believe it. But the woman spoke truly: it had been her seizure that had triggered the Uruk. And while the admission of living with the Uruk had harmed Eolina's case before the people, Eomer saw truth in her words for the simple fact that she stood before him unharmed after living with the Uruk. It made Eomer's head ache to consider, but he could not help feeling that the woman was right about the beast. After everything, was there truly more to these creatures than violence? Could one exist in peace? And if so, how would it be just for Eomer to condemn him, especially if he had an alibi for the night Lathga's wife was murdered!

If only there was another witness to support the woman's claims…

"Do not listen to her, Great King!"

A young man's voice cut through the crowd, and Eomer and Eolina both turned to see who spoke.

"Do not listen to her! This woman is long-befouled by the Uruk-kind, she can no longer be trusted to honor our laws or speak the truth!"

Eolina's eyes widened, and her fingers crept over her mouth as the young man emerged from the crowd, bowing to the king. It was her former betrothed: the young man who had refused to marry her, when she returned from Isengard.

"Wareth?" she whispered.

"Who are you?" Eomer demanded. "What knowledge do you have of this woman?"

"My name is Wareth Tanner of Thunder Hill, my lord, and I was to marry this girl six years ago. But she was taken up by a horde of those beasts, and what they did to her I dare not consider, except that she took a taste for it! She ran away and likely spawned a legion of imps, and these are what haunt Fangorn now: her foul brats! And that one is likely the sire!"

Eolina covered her burning face at the shame of his words.

"Is there any truth in this, Mistress?" Eomer asked, revolted to his core.

Wareth would not let her reply. "Oh there is proof, my lord, on her own flesh!" At that he reached out and grabbed Eolina, tearing at the collar of her tunic as if he would rip her clothes from her in public.

Eolina screamed in terror. Eomer stood up from his throne. "Guards, seize him! How dare you defile my court by laying hands on this woman! Would you strip her bare for all to see, in the very presence of your king at that?"

"She is filth! Filth!" Wareth howled. Eomer waved his hand, and the guards dragged Wareth out of the hall, his protests echoing angrily against the walls.

Eomer looked down on the woman, who was on her knees now, sobbing and clutching her torn garments together. The king came down of his throne and knelt before her. "Have no fear, Mistress. You stand accused before the law, but you shall not be dishonored in my very Hall." Eomer shouted out to the crowd, "You may all go! I shall question the woman alone, and inform you of my decision when it comes."

The courtiers, wildly disappointed, began to pass from the hall. Lathga tightened his jaw anxiously, wishing that the whole thing could be over and done with, and the Uruk's blood spilled. Helmsgaard and Serrick exchanged a hard look of disapproval.

"Courage," Eomer murmured. Then he stood, and held his hand out to the woman. Clutching her garments with one hand, she slipped her small fingers into her king's hand, and he raised her from the ground. Eomer brought her to the empty table at the side of the hall, and poured her a glass of ale with his own hand. "Drink, steady yourself."

Eolina gratefully drank, though it couldn't take the tremble from her hands. Eomer noticed that her hands were odd, crooked in some way. The ragged scars on her neck and shoulders took his breath away. "Come now, Mistress," Eomer said gently, but firmly. "You have much to explain."

Eolina nodded, biting her lips to keep them from shaking. There was no holding anything back anymore. If she had any hope of winning freedom for Rakhan, the king needed to understand what had brought Eolina and Rakhan together. And so she steadied herself, and then she began from the beginning, with her capture at Thunder Hill through her escape from Isengard. She told him weeping of her son Gaelen, a child left helpless and alone in Fangorn Forest. Eomer sat mesmerized as Eolina told him of the Dunlandings' attack, and how she met Rakhan. Finally, she spoke of how hard it was to trust him, but how equally hard he had fought to win her trust. "Yes, my lord, we are lovers now. I do love him, with all my heart, and I hope to have his child. I know that must seem repulsive to you, sir, but you must imagine it: you see how those Men think of me. What life could I possibly have, if Rakhan had not come along? Who would I marry? Rakhan has saved me from a lonely, barren life, and together we will give my son a family so that he need not spend his life in isolation when I am gone to the next world. This is all we want, my lord: a quiet life together, away from a world that despises us."

Eomer, moved to tears, knew what he had to do. In the afternoon he announced his decision to the court. The woman and the Uruk called Rakhan were innocent of wrong-doing. The Uruk would be released from the gaol and brought into the hall so that he could recover from his injuries, and once the danger of infection had passed, the couple would be escorted back to Fangorn Forest. "As long as they continue to live in peace, let no man of Rohan draw a sword against them!"

Horrified, the court exited in silence. Lathga had not got down the stairs before he was shouting about justice, and Serrick and Helmsgaard, along with seven other men of the Eored, slipped away in secret, swearing that they had no king at all.


	14. Chapter 14

"Your Majesty!"

A bright light poured into the dank gaol, and Rakhan raised his head.

"I will see the prisoner," came the king's voice.

Rakhan, who had seen no point in speaking to the Whiteface's _snaga_, pushed himself to his feet. His back was a misery, but Rakhan wasn't about to show Lord Whiteface any weakness. And if ever there was a moment that escape was within reach…

King Eomer stopped a foot before Rakhan's cell and squared off before him. Rakhan had seen him in battle twice, though they had never locked swords. Did this Whiteface remember him? He probably could not tell one Uruk-hai from another.

"I cannot understand it,"Eomer began coldly, "but that woman cares for you. Will you make a liar and a fool of her?"

Rakhan narrowed his eyes. "I will not make a prisoner of her, as you have done."

Eomer sized Rakhan up for a long moment, and Rakhan couldn't help feeling the beginning of a low growl developing in his throat.

"I would kill you, Uruk, if I were acting on my own inclinations."

"You could try," Rakhan murmured darkly, and a dangerous moment passed between them, Uruk-hai warrior and the Horseman.

And then Eomer sighed and said, "But I do not act for myself any longer. I must be a king, not only the protector of my people but the guardian of justice and virtue. I don't suppose you can understand that, Uruk, but it means, to me, that your race alone should not be enough to condemn you. Eolina says you wish to live in peace. Is that right?"

"I've killed Men since Sauron fell. Four Dunlandings, and four of your own. The first I killed because they attacked Eolina: they meant to rape her in the Forest on their way to raid your villages. The second, your Men, I killed because they took her, and they would have killed me. But had your Men left us alone, had you not attacked us, then your Riders would be in the world still. Can you say you would have done less, Horse Lord? If a party of my kind stole upon you and your mate?"

Eomer considered it. "No, I cannot say I would have done differently. But if you were released? What would you do?"

"I would take my woman and go," Rakhan said, the challenge bare in his voice.

Eomer—though legitimately horrified at the unbidden image in his mind of this devil on top of that fair, fragile woman—nonetheless was deeply curious about the raw emotional bond he had witnessed between the two. When Rakhan had held Eolina pressed to his chest with one arm, and brandished his sword in the other, Eomer had wondered if everything he had been taught was a lie. For here was an Uruk un-slaved, and he had shown valour and love.

"What sort of life do you live with her?" Eomer asked.

Rakhan was wary to speak of it, but he understood that he was bargaining for his freedom now. There was nothing to tell but the truth of it, and if it infuriated the Whiteface, what could be done?

"We live as mates. We gather food and keep up our home, and lie together before the fire at night. Just before you attacked us, I had taught Eolina to fish with a spear; she wanted to teach me to swim." _And she gave herself to me, and taught me what it was to love, and to be free._

Eomer felt displeased, hearing this. He felt that he had done wrong, even though he could see no other way to protect his people. He was certain the Uruk and the woman were not feigning this affection. Everything he had thought about his enemies, that they were brutes incapable of honor, was wrong! But still, Eomer needed to be cautious. "How did you come to be in Fangorn Forest? How did you meet the woman? Did you know her at Isengard?"

"You know about that?" Rakhan asked, wary now, hunting for some condemnation in the Whiteface's eyes.

"She told me."

"And so she told you that when she escaped her torture—for make no mistake, that is what it was—her own father put her into the street? And the man who was to mate her would not take her in, and abused her with coarse words?"

Eomer had the grace to be shame-faced. "She told me everything; I could not understand otherwise how you and she could come to pass." Best, Eomer thought, not to mention Wareth humiliating Eolina in open court. "But I asked about you, Uruk, not her. I am still considering your release, and I am not satisfied yet."

"What do you want to know?" Rakhan asked.

"How you came to Fangorn, for one," Eomer repeated sternly.

"The Black Gate fell. I ran—alone, if that's what you need to know. I've seen no Uruk-hai since the battle. After I ran, I wound up in the Forest. I thought there would be less folk of all kinds there; I wanted to stay alone, away from the world. Until I found the woman, and now all I wish is to live with her, and our children. Again, away from your world. I care nothing for it."

"She is with child?" Eomer asked, arching his pale brow.

"She could be. I want her to be, and she wants it too."

Eomer regarded Rakhan carefully. "You were a captain of sorts, at the Black Gate. Yes, I remember you now. I did not know you without your armor."

"The War is over now, Horse Lord," Rakhan offered, and again the two watched each other, seeing each other as warriors, and finally, as individuals.

"All the same, it is not over for my people as far as your kind goes. I will grant you safe conduct back to the Forest, as soon as your wounds are mended. I understand there is a young Uruk, her child, who needs her, and you shall go as soon as you are able. But you will stay in my Hall, out of sight, until that day comes. I've had a room prepared for you, and a proper physician to treat you."

Rakhan grinned. "What was that you sent before? I've known Orcs with softer hands."

"A butcher," Eomer said.

"Aye. Very nice," Rakhan replied. "But I will stay with my mate, if you are to set me free. If I can't be with her, I might as well stay in your cage. And I needn't so much mending, just a day or so. We must get back, as you said. Gaelen is alone."

Eomer conceded. "You may stay with her. Out of sight, until you leave. We have many guests at night, it would not do to have either of you walking about. And you will be under guard, Uruk. My elite guard."

"I don't want any fight with you," Rakhan admitted quietly. "I want my woman, and I want to go home."

Eomer looked over his shoulder and snapped in the air. "Release him." At the same moment, he beckoned in a small company of twenty shining soldiers with cold, grey-blue eyes and ice blond hair. All wore heavy swords and daggers. Eomer turned to Rakhan. "Think of them as your protecters, Uruk. For truly, there will be many even in my house who would wish you dead."

Rakhan eyed the guards, gritting his teeth. He was supposed to believe that these Men would defend him? He was amazed when the fat warden came with his roll of keys and opened the iron gate. Rakhan stepped out, but then Eomer stood in his path, his blue eyes flashing.

"I am giving you a chance to claim some honor for yourself, Uruk. Do not disappoint me, or miss your own opportunity."

Rakhan—a head taller than Eomer, gazed down with hard, yet calm, eyes. "My name is Rakhan, not Uruk," he said firmly, and then he bowed his head slightly, and walked around Eomer King.

Rakhan felt his heart swelling when he caught scent of her in the air. He picked up his pace as the guards walked him down the hall, the pain in his back almost totally gone. Another armed man opened the door, and Rakhan immediately saw Eolina by the window. She stood—a lovey gown of pale blue falling like water to the floor—and ran to him.

He paced across the floor and swept Eolina up in his arms. She was sobbing, her words mangled and inaudible but her relief and love plain and clear. Rakhan closed his eyes and held her tightly as the door slammed behind them. Then, he looked over her shoulder, to the wide, fancy-style bed, the sort it was rumored mockingly that the wizard Saruman slept in. _I thought you would die,_ she was saying. Rakhan lifted her up in his arms and walked her to the bed.

"They will let us go," Rakhan said, burying his lips in her hair. "As soon as their physician has seen me—imagine that."

"Are you badly hurt?" Eolina demanded. "I was so afraid for you…"

"It's bad enough, but they sent in a butcher who put some salve on and made some rough stitches, and now they will send me a healer. And we will have safe conduct home. I think Eomer and I have made a peace treaty of sorts. Perhaps the first between my kind and his."

"Gaelen—"

"Will be all right, little Lina. He's a strong boy, you've taught him well to find food even if he can't hunt fully yet. And he will be safe and hidden in our grove. Don't cry, Lina…"

Rakhan clutched her shaking body, stroking her hair and whispering encouragement. She was terrified for her child, but also desperately grateful that Rakhan was alive and returned to her. Eolina wrapped her arms around his thick neck and plunged her hands into his thick, coarse black hair, and before she knew what she was doing her lips were pressed feverishly to his, and his hands were snatching at her skirt and pushing it up her silky thighs. He was a moment away from refuge in her tight sweet body when he heard the jingling of keys, and Men opening the door. Rakhan gasped roughly, shaking with frustrated desire. "Later," he promised her, climbing off her just as the royal physician—his face a mask of horror at the sight—entered the chamber.

(Note-It's been brought to my attention that Chapter 10 needs a little more filling out, so I extended the love scene for anyone who wants to go back and read it. I guess this will bump us to an M rating, but it's important to the story)


	15. Chapter 15

"You keep that hood up," Gimli instructed Gaelen as they passed through the high wooden gates of Edoras. Gimli had given Gaelen his own cloak of soft homespun wool to hide his race from curious eyes.

"Where will we find them?" Gaelen demanded. He sniffed the air helplessly: it was far too thick with the scent of Men for the boy to detect his mother or Rakhan.

On the other side, Legolas, leading Wingfoot, said, "We shall go to the king. He is a friend, and a good Man. He will help us. But you must keep still. We don't want a mob of angry Eorlings trying to fight us. They will be afraid of you, and want to hurt you."

Gaelen frowned bitterly. In two short days, he had learned that the world outside his cave reacted with hatred and violence to the mere sight of him, and it was a cruel, confusing hurt to the boy.

Many of the Men who had been at Helm's Deep recognized Legolas and Gimli; frequently they'd bow courteously as the small party passed. When a group of merchants broke into applause, Gaelen couldn't keep still. He asked fearfully, "What's happening? Why are they doing that?"

"We fought a great battle together," Gimli said stoutly, tugging at his ornately wrought belt. "Up the hill, now."

As they approached the Golden Hall, the air changed. There were warriors congregated about, and women as well with their hands on their broad hips, and a look of disapproval in their eyes.

"Stay close, boy," Gimli cautioned.

"They are angry with their king," Legolas hissed, his sharp ears picking out bits and pieces of conversation. "They are talking about Uruks."

They brought the horse to the royal stable, politely deflecting eager greetings and requests to dine from the younger Riders milling about. By the time they reached the doors to the Hall they were deeply concerned. Eomer was new-come to his throne and a hero, and they had been counting on the good will of the people to win freedom for the boy's mother. Legolas and Gimli were not so sure about the Uruk-hai, no matter what the boy told them.

The doors swung open and Helmsgaard frowned swiftly when he saw the guests. He recovered quickly and said, "Welcome to Edoras, honored friends! And who is your young companion? Not one of the Halflings?"

Legolas smiled. "No, just a youngster gone astray. But we must see your king, Captain, it is urgent."

Helmsgaard bowed and stepped out of their path.

The Hall was dark and quiet, as most of the court was outside listening to Lathga's protestations of justice denied. King Eomer sat at a side table playing knucklebones with several of his Riders. The king sensed the deep discord in his court, but he hoped the matter would blow over once the Uruk was gone. He could not hold Rakhan simply because people would like to believe Rakhan was the killer, no matter how upset Lathga One-Eye was. Eomer was a warrior and a skilled leader of Men in battle, but he had yet been tried in the more ruthless realm of royal politics.

Eomer was gladdened greatly to see Legolas and Gimli. He rose from the table and spread his arms. "Brothers! Welcome to Edoras! Have you changed your mind, Gimli, and come to give me battle for insulting your Lady though I am repentant?"

"We must speak to you in private," Legolas said quick to the point. "We have a companion we'd rather not reveal in company, and he needs your help. His mother was taken captive in the Forest yesterday morning."

"Indeed? This is the child? Come, let us go into my private chambers."

They walked around the dais and passed through a sturdy oak and iron door. Once inside Gimli encouraged Gaelen, "Go on, take your hood off and greet King Eomer."

Gaelen swallowed and put his hood back, and looked up at the king with his bright green eyes.

_Remarkable,_ Eomer thought. The child was Uruk through and through, and yet his eyes were completely innocent! Moreover, those green eyes were liquid with sadness. "Do you want to see your mother?" Eomer asked.

Gaelen—overwhelmed by buildings and people and grief—could only nod.

"Follow me."

Gimli put the hood back over the boy's long, shiny black braids, and they hurried through a long, torchlit corridor. At the end was the guard of soldiers, standing at crisp attention, the farthest of whom opened the door on sight of the king.

Eolina, sitting on the bed spreading a soothing paste on Rakhan's long stitched gash, looked up just as Gaelen pushed his hood back. Crying out with joy, Eolina flew off the bed and tore across the room, snatching her child up in her arms. Rakhan sat up slowly, his heart swelling. Eolina brought Gaelen to the bed and the boy dove into Rakhan's arms. He knew well enough how to hug the boy now, and he opened his arms for Eolina as well. With his family in his arms, Rakhan looked up at the King and his companions, whom he recognized immediately from the battlefield. "Thank you," Rakhan said quietly.

Legolas and Gimli turned to the king in astonishment. Eomer laughed softly and said, "It's incredible, I know. But they are safe with him, believe me. You see why I can do no less than return this family to their home, and leave them in peace."

In a smoky tavern at the bottom of the mountain, a hooded Helmsgaard leaned into the small knot of men and said, "It's no good tonight as we had planned. The Elf and Dwarf have come, and they will dine together in private for certain. So we must make our move tomorrow. Eomer has told me that he will escort the beast back to the Forest himself. He deems the Orc worthy a royal escort! Serrick, are the men in agreement?"

"Eomer has instructed me as well: only twenty of his Eored will escort us, and seventeen of them are in agreement with us. They don't want Orcs creeping out of Fangorn and killing their wives and children, and this king doesn't seem to care. So he is no king, as it turns out."

"Good. The others will fall in line or die. Have you still the Dunlendings' weapons?"

Serrick nodded sharply.

"Very well then. It will be tomorrow, and when I am King of the Mark, you shall be my Captain, Serrick, and there will be gold to share amongst us all."

"Helmsgaard, sir," Serrick asked coyly. "What of the woman? What if she interferes?"

"She is spoiled meat," Helmsgaard replied brutally. "Fit for dogs. Even if she doesn't get in the way, I wouldn't shed a tear if she was ran through. It would pay her out even for her crimes."


	16. Chapter 16

"Will you ride with us?" Gaelen asked, looking chiefly at the Elf, whose thoughts he could hear when they were unguarded.

Legolas looked down that the boy and smiled. This natural Uruk child had captivated him. There was magic in the boy: he had called songbirds for Legolas, and shown higher empathy than a Man, and Legolas was quite sure Gaelen could read his mind like another Elf might. All the same there were sure signs of Melkor's dark magic: the boy liked his meat near raw, savoring the taste of flesh already. Gaelen had not allowed Legolas or Gimli to enter the protective circle of his territory—incredibly in a grove of Ent-herded trees—where an Elf would have invited his companions in and broken bread once deciding to travel together. And the boy was a consummate killer: his aim and strength would improve as he bow-hunted, but it was the eye that Legolas watched, when Gaelen had insisted on showing him that he could shoot well enough to win his mother back. It had been all Legolas and Gimli could do to convince the boy that fighting would not be prudent. Legolas was reluctant to leave him, now that he was restored to his mother.

"I shall ride," Legolas said.

"And I shall walk," Gimli growled, and Gaelen grinned. The dwarf had made his feelings about horses clear: he'd rather run, and that was no mean feat for a dwarf either. "I'll bet your—er—father—won't want to ride either."

"No," Gaelen admitted. "Wingfoot doesn't trust him. But that's just because he doesn't trust himself with Wingfoot."

Legolas shook his head in disbelief, and then looked up sharply as the grown Uruk left the Golden Hall with Eolina. The woman was quite beautiful. Breyda—horrified that Eolina's tunic had been torn from her—had seen it fit to supply Eolina with dresses, culled from her many years working as a lady's maid. Now Eolina wore a dress of soft wool died in a pale coral, and she boldly clutched the hand of her Uruk-hai. She further scandalized the enormous crowd assembled to see the strange departure by hiking up her skirts—revealing a sturdy pair of britches that made Breyda grin—and launching onto her bay mare with an agility that would have made any Rider proud. When she reached down and pulled her strange boy up infront of her on the horse, kissing him and laying her cheek briefly against his braids, many of the matrons of Rohan couldn't help switching to take her part. Especially after what they had heard of that atrocious Wareth Tanner of Thunder Hill! They thought their king very right to empty the court after that, when they considered it that night over their mead.

King Eomer trotted down the hill then, followed by twenty of his Eored. Eolina felt her heart rise into her mouth: the honor was too great, even after what they had been through. Rakhan laughed softly and said, "Not too bad for a _tark._"

Eomer looked down as he trotted past. "As soon as we are at the borders of my land, Rakhan, I shall return your weapons." Eomer himself held the Uruk's sword, bow and quiver, and daggers in a leather roll.

"Still don't trust me, Whiteface?" Rakhan asked.

"You'll have no need of them yet," Eomer replied, and then he spurred his horse to the front of the column. Ten riders were on each side of Rakhan, Eolina, Gaelen, Legolas, and Gimli. They were spread into four columns of five, their grim faces at odds with the bright day.

The sun was golden in a robin's egg blue sky. A warm western wind blew, full of the grassy scent of the steppe. Gaelen chattered amicably, telling Rakhan that Legolas was quite a good archer as well.

"I know," Rakhan grinned. "He almost got me at Helm's Deep. Shoot for the neck, or under the arm: that was your idea, wasn't it? You were the first to do it, and many Uruk-hai died for that clever trick."

Legolas, riding beside Eolina, arched his neat eyebrows, unresponsive.

"Ah, the War is over," Rakhan declared. "I've no quarrel with you, Elf, nor you, Master Dwarf! Certainly not after you brought me my boy."

Gaelen smiled widely. "I told you he was my father. I didn't used to have a father, but now I will have a father _and_ a brother."

Eolina flushed mercilessly and gave her son a quick squeeze. "Hush about that, it's private."

Rakhan's rich, booming laugh echoed over the grasslands. He thought he had never been so happy, at ease amongst those who had—really for no reason at all—been his enemies. "I'd have you eat with us tonight," he told Legolas and Gimli. "Roasted pheasant smothered in honey for our guests, what do you think, my love?"

"Certainly," Eolina replied. "We would be honored."

"You can see how a _free_ Uruk lives," Rakhan told Legolas and Gimli. "That alone ought to be worth it for you."

They rode on for a while, a slow procession making its way to the northwestern borders of Rohan. Rakhan was determined to ignore the furious hatred directed his way from every single rider save the king. Yet as the day wore on it worked on him. "I will be glad to be home," Rakhan told Eolina.

She reached down and squeezed his hand. "I as well, back in our own place. I can feel them looking at me, these Men."

"Because you're the loveliest thing they've seen," Rakhan assured her, though he knew it was the farthest thing from the truth. As beautiful as Eolina was, the way Helmsgaard's eyes passed over her every so often brought a low growl to Rakhan's throat. Thankfully, it would not be long now: Rakhan saw the Forest rising like a dark mass on the horizon. These Men with their quick judgements could retreat into memory once more. He could smell their hate on the air, so hot and bright that Rakhan marveled that they obeyed their king and did not rush Rakhan at once. Men were far less obedient to their commanders than Uruk-hai. Rakhan felt a chill run up his spine, as if he were on his way into a battle. Compelled to look at the Elf, Rakhan was surprised to see Legolas frown suddenly.

"Almost free," Rakhan murmured to Eolina, trying to quiet the sudden rushing of his blood.

At that moment the farthest column of Riders to Rakhan's left spurred their horses forward, incredibly rushing before their king and cutting off his path. "Shit, go!" Rakhan growled, grabbing Wingfoot's bridal to spin the horse. "Ride to the cave, Eolina!"

"What's happening? Come with me!" Eolina cried, but Rakhan slapped her horse viciously on his haunches and sent Wingfoot bolting not a moment too soon. The Riders on the outside right had wheeled around, and now they closed Rakhan, Legolas, and Gimli in. Rakhan could hear the king shouting in furious alarm, demanding their obedience. There was no time to think, though. Riders were closing in on all sides, murder in their eyes.

Rakhan ran at the closest horse, whose rider drove down on Rakhan with lowered spear. Rakhan sidestepped the attack, grabbing the spear and launching the Man from his saddle. There was no question of what Rakhan needed to do: dispatch as many as he could, on his way to stand by King Eomer. He fell on the stunned Man, grabbed his head and ripped it from his shoulders. Rakhan could hardly grab the Man's sword before a flying spear shaved against his arm. A horse galloped for Rakhan, the Rider swinging an axe wildly. Rakhan got low with the sword; but just as contact approached, the Rider lurched forward and fell to the ground, an Elf-arrow in his back. Rakhan looked up in wild surprise.

"To the king!" Legolas shouted, and Rakhan nodded and ran for the knot of battling knights. The king was somewhere in the middle, fighting for his life. Two more Men sought to bar his path. Rakhan—regretting it—cut the legs out from under the first horse. Fortune was on Rakhan's side, for when that Man fell his back broke at once. Rakhan raced towards the second Rider, cutting him down the same, decapitating the Man almost before he hit the ground. It was not for nothing that Saruman had sent Rakhan down into the pits so often: he was a formidable warrior, one of the best. But it was Legolas who claimed the victory, his arrows dropping a full ten of the Riders. Legolas abandoned his bow for the double swords sheathed on his back, and galloped for the king.

Eomer was holding his own, but losing ground quickly with five swordsmen attacking him. Rakhan leaped onto the back of a horse and cut the Rider's throat, then found himself in the undesirable position of mounting a panicked horse. The creature bucked and reared, and Rakhan flew through the air once more, hitting the ground so hard his breath was knocked from his lungs. He pushed himself up quickly. By then, the fight was over. Eomer sat on his horse even more pale-faced than usual. Only one of the traitors was left alive, sitting on the ground, bleeding from the shoulder. Rakhan snorted and raised his sword over his head, and stomped over to the Man who had made Eolina so miserable.

"Stay your hand, Rakhan," Eomer growled, his voice a frozen wind. "I will bring him to Edoras, so that he can explain why nineteen Men won't be coming home to their wives and children. Was it worth it, Helmsgaard? To attack your king?"

Rakhan pulled the blow at the last moment. "You are the filth," Rakhan spat. "You betrayed a fair Captain, and lost. Pitiful."

"He is _not_ my king!" Helmsgaard crowed. "He puts your kind over his own!"

"I put the laws of our fathers over all, Helmsgaard. You would have me comdemn Rakhan for another's crime, because for you hate is better than peace. What did we fight our War for, if we are to keep our hearts full of shadow?"

"He doesn't understand honor!" Gimli exclaimed. "Even the Uruk knew where his honor lay."

Rakhan, breathless and clear-eyed from battle, laughed at the Dwarf. They talked on for a moment, and Rakhan knew the pleasure of seeing trust in Eomer's eyes when they lighted upon him. Rakhan tipped his head a little, the slightest of a bow. But something still bothered him. _Nineteen Men who won't return…_

Rakhan needed no more than a glance to count. Only eighteen traitors lay dead on the ground.

One of them had gone after Eolina and Gaelen.


	17. Chapter 17

Serrick hit Eolina like a catapulted boulder, knocking her and Gaelen both to the ground. Momentarily stunned from the fall, Eolina became lucid again as Serrick pounced on top of her and wrenched up her skirts.

She bucked and screamed. "Get off me! Get off!"

"You'd rather your beast, bitch, but today you're going to feel a _Man_. Can you even tell the difference… you… you filthy… whore?" The soldier was breathless with desire now, but the woman was fighting too hard for his liking. Serrick drew his gauntlet-covered hand back and issued three hard slaps across Eolina's face, busting her lip open.

"Leave her alone!" Gaelen shouted, throwing himself onto Serrick's back. The boy had never known rage before; now it pumped through him. Having no weapons at his disposal he punched the soldier in the neck beneath his helmet, he dug his knees into Serrick's back. He grabbed the soldier by his hair and tried to pull him off, ripping out a fistful of lank, pale locks.

"Devil imp!" Serrick howled, leaping up to face the young Uruk-hai. He punched Gaelen hard in the jaw and the little boy rocked back into darkness. Then he fell on Eolina again, wondering for a half a moment why her bright blue eyes had seemed to go grey and foggy.

Eolina was no longer in the tall grasses at the border of Fangorn. She was in the pits of Isengard, her head ringing from sharp blows, a male on top of her, her cringing helpless anticipating the horror of what was to come. Serrick didn't mind that she had gone limp. It was better for his purpose, as long as she saw what he did. He ran his foul tongue along her cheek and relished the woman shrinking away from him. "Only like the devils, eh? No matter, I'll teach you better!"

It was coming in flashes: the biting, the clawing, the growling laughter. The trees overhead had become dank earthen tunnels. Eolina twisted her head away, trying to hide her face. A rough knee split her legs apart. There could be no resistance.

But then, incredibly, her son's face appeared through Eolina's terror, confusing her. _Gaelen?_ Eolina saw dark blood running over the boy's face, she saw his closed eyes. And then she felt the Man's hand ripping at the laces of her britches, and terror snapped into fury. Her sight returned, hazed now with red fury, but clear enough to see the good sized rock near her hand.

He was murmuring filth to her, pressing his wet mouth all over her, his erection jabbing against her, moments away from entering her. All thought left Eolina and she grabbed the rock and started bashing it against the bright shiny helm over Serrick's head.

The first blow stunned him, but Eolina didn't stop. Blood began to leak down his face and his body went limp, and Eolina kicked him off her, fell on his chest, pummeling his face with the bloody rock. She couldn't hear her own screaming, couldn't feel the tears pouring down her face, couldn't stop hitting her attacker though his face was now beyond recognition.

Until a hard set of arms grabbed her and pulled her back. Wild with rage, Eolina swung her arm about, desperate to land another blow. "Lina! Stop it! You're safe, you're safe, little Lina, oh…"

Rakhan's trusted voice ripped her back to reality, and Eolina realized what she had done. She threw the rock away in horror, stammering, "What have I done?"

"You defended yourself and your baby," Rakhan said steadily. "And did a damned good job of it."

"Gaelen!"

Rakhan released her, and she ran to her unconscious son. Rakhan was a step behind her, his rough strong hands touching the boy tenderly. "Got hit in the face?"

"He tried to save me," Eolina said urgently.

A cursory examination told Rakhan that Gaelen had been knocked out, as he himself had been a thousand times. "He'll be all right. Might be a little sick when he wakes up, might be a little dizzy, but no more. Uruk-hai have thick skulls." Rakhan brushed his fingers over the bloody hank of Serrick's hair still tangled in Gaelen's grasp. "Little warrior," he breathed affectionately, and then he scooped the boy up in his arms. He looked to Eolina urgently. "Did he—the Man?"

"No," she said, shaking her head.

"Can you walk? I suppose I could carry you both…"

"I'll be—I'm—I killed him, Rakhan…"

"If he hadn't attacked you, he wouldn't be dead. That's all there is to it." Rakhan looked up as Eomer and Legolas galloped up, Gimli riding behind Legolas.

"Are you harmed, Eolina?" Eomer demanded urgently. Then his eyes flickered to Serrick, flat on his back, his face beaten to a pulp.

"No," Eolina said quietly, shame in her voice. "He didn't… achieve his desire…"

The king stared on her with hard eyes for so long Eolina feared he would condemn her. But when he finally spoke he said, "You are a shield-maiden, Eolina. There is no shame in defeating one who wishes to destroy you. This day has brought me much sadness, but worst of all is that I've brought all of these troubles to you, madam. I vow to you that you are under my protection henceforth, as will be all creatures of any race who live in peace. Truly, this day for me is the end of the War and all its suffering. Forgive me, madam. I had no just cause to attack you, nor you, Rakhan."

Eolina bowed her head. "There is no need, my lord. But—Thank you."

"Not to cut it short, Eomer King," Rakhan said, "but I'd best get my son home."

"We'll help you," Legolas offered. "I have some healing skill. I won't be able to rest until I see Gaelen up and well again. He's an incredible boy."

Rakhan eyed the Elf curiously. All of a sudden, he heard, for the first time since Saruman's fall, the stirrings of another's consciousness intruding upon his own. Bewildered, Rakhan strained to make sense of the faint whispers.

_Can you hear me? _

Rakhan was stunned. His former master had told him of his making, but Rakhan had assumed—in this new life—that that was a lie. But how else could the Elf break into his mind in such a way? And might Rakhan speak back, to the Elf? And what would it mean for Rakhan—for all of his people!—if indeed they were kin to Elves?

"We'd appreciate your help," Rakhan said. "And we'll have our pheasant dinner. Just don't expect me to start calling you brother, Elf."

Rakhan bid the king farewell. Then he led his family, and his strange new friends, deep into the Forest, towards his home.


	18. Epilogue

Spring bloomed in Fangorn Forest. White flowers like stars and deep purple violets covered the ground a month earlier than they would on the plains of Rohan. Birds sang their high, sweet, rolling songs. Rakhan bowed deeply to Lord Fangorn, thanking the Entmaster for his counsel.

It had been hard enough to go before the Ent, mightier than a troll and full of ancient wisdom. Rakhan's heart was pure now—clean, he called it, though he'd kill for his family in a moment—and so Treebeard accepted him, and unbeknownst to Rakhan, had done so from the very beginning. The Ent was glad to see sweet Eolina happy at last, and it was Treebeard, with his strange wisdom, who had known that only the reborn Great Orc could have given the lady her peace.

But Treebeard was one former enemy. Lord Elrond was another entirely. Rakhan clutched Legolas' letter in his large dark hand. It would be his passport, if he chose to go to Rivendell. The very paper the note was written on was magicked, and no one seeing it would doubt the Uruk on his travels. It was Legolas' hope—and Elrond's as well—that Rakhan could serve as a sort of leader for those of his kind who foreswore evil and wished to live a decent life. There were many Uruk-hai left behind in the world, starving and bewildered and sick from the memories of battles that they had been compelled to fight. At first Elrond hadn't cared a bit. They could be hunted down and exterminated; King Elessar had many soldiers engaged for that purpose alone. Then Legolas had told him of the Uruk Rakhan, who had made a life of peace, conforted and mated a victim of Isengard, and defended King Eomer from treachery. Elrond had paused to consider it, and admitted that it was indeed marvelous, and hopeful. Yet Elrond would go no further.

But when Legolas had told him more, that the Uruk could _hear_ him, could weave his own sort of magic that held echoes of Elven power… Well, Elrond had determined to put his own hatred aside. That autumn he would leave Middle Earth with the last of the Elves. Perhaps it would be possible to work one last good in the world before he abandoned it.

Rakhan wasn't sure he wanted to leave Fangorn. He would be happy to never see anyone else again, save his family, and perhaps occasionally Eomer, Legolas, and Gimli. But did he have a duty to his kind? That was the question Rakhan had to work out for himself. Treebeard said, of course, _perhaps._ Rakhan replied to the Ent that he had no Master anymore, so what duty could there be to any but his own family? Treebeard had asked him what he felt about his former brothers, who were not as strong as Rakhan, who were lost in a world they no longer understood, hunted and hated. "Talk to the Half-Elf, Rakhan," Treebeard had counseled. "Hear his mind, and see how you feel then."

Rakhan didn't want to upset the peace he had made for himself. As the months flew by, Rakhan began to understand exactly how _much_ Saruman had stolen from him. Peace—in the world around him, but moreso in his own mind—was the greatest of these. To go back into an insane world, to counsel and shepard his own dangerous kind… _No,_ Rakhan thought. I have no duty to them, surely! Yet his heart told him otherwise, gave him another lesson. The peace he had now might not be free. Maybe it came with a responsibility, like Eomer's crown did. Eomer had risked that crown for the responsibility that came with it, to be just and valorous. Was the same demanded of Rakhan?

His confusing thoughts were interrupted by Gaelen darting down the path. "It's time, it's time! Hurry, Father!"

"It's time!" Rakhan repeated, starting to run. He tore into the cave and saw Eolina—swollen thick with Rakhan's baby—sitting on her bed with her hands pressed into the small of her back. Rakhan dropped to his knees beside her, his heart in his throat, a hopeful smile on his face. "My son comes?"

Breathing hard, Eolina grinned back, nodding her head. "By tonight for sure."

"What do you need? What can I do for you?" He kissed her brow gently, feeling it damp with light sweat. He brushed stray golden curls from her face.

"All's ready—" Eolina was cut off by a hard contraction. She pressed her chin to her chest and closed her eyes, and breathed through the pain. Uruk-hai babies came faster and harder, but they was all she knew, and she was not afraid. How different this time would be from the last! Neither alone nor afraid, Eolina was confident and ready to bear her second child.

"Is it very painful?" Rakhan asked anxiously.

Eolina nodded, and then her breath returned. "I just need hot water. Send Gaelen to fetch some fresh water from the stream, and put it over low heat. We'll need it to clean and warm the baby when he comes. There are clean leather cloths in my basket, and a knife that we'll purify with fire to cut the cord."

"Cut the cord?" Rakhan asked, intrigued.

"You'll see. But rub my back, _please._ And… stay close, Rakhan. I want you to be here for everything."

"I could be nowhere else!"

Rakhan had thought himself strong, but he was amazed by Eolina's near silent endurance of what seemed to be hideous pain. For hours her body worked, sometimes violently, pushing the baby into the world. She squatted over a bare leather mat, digging her fingernails into Rakhan's warm arm when the contractions came. Rakhan whispered to her and kissed her neck and face, willing the strength of his own arms into Eolina's small body. He was breathless himself—with excitement. For all the many hundreds he must have sired in Isengard, for all that Gaelen was his heart and soul, Rakhan's first true child was coming into the world. And he was finally to experience what Saruman had robbed him of: a natural birth and the loving arms of a mother. Rakhan wondered if it was possible to die of joy; if so, he was surely close to it.

As twilight fell Eolina's silence broke. The churning, tearing pain came in waves, crashing one on the back of the other, giving her no rest. Now Rakhan was afraid. It seemed to be so _much_ pain, might she die of it?

"Hang on, love, be strong, be strong my Lina…" Rakhan tried rubbing her back again but now she swatted him away.

"Lie down—" she gasped, almost falling back into Rakhan. He eased her gently to onto the floor.

"What now?"

Her response was a hard scream, and again she drove her chin to her chest. Rakhan took her hand and then winced a little as she ground his heavy bones together, some mighty strength flowing within her that Rakhan guessed was far superior to his own. "Go, go—" she hissed, and Rakhan crawled around her, between her bent legs.

Rakhan felt his eyes watering, but he didn't realize he was weeping. An owl hooted in the distance as the black-haired, grey-brown baby came into the world. Ever so carefully, Rakhan lifted the baby—still somehow attached to Eolina by a long purple rope. "A boy," he breathed, smiling through his tears. "_My_ boy."

"Ours, I think!" Eolina quipped, mischief in her bright blue eyes.

"The pain is gone?" Rakhan asked in amazement.

"Gone," she whispered, wiping her own freely flowing tears away. "Now listen to me carefully, for there is much to do."

An hour later Rakhan lay behind Eolina in bed, his heart bleeding once again. The baby Uruk-hai was sheltered in the warm, pale arms of his mother, safe and content, nursing from her full white breast. Rakhan held them both, looking up every so often to smile at Gaelen, who sat on the bed transfixed by his tiny brother. Rakhan did not know who to give thanks to for bringing him into this dream, but gratitude overwhelmed him. Every longing he had never even known he had was met by the sight before him: a beautiful mate, a mother's embrace, and strong sons who would one day hunt with him. Strong _free_ sons, untouched by Darkness, sons who would grow mighty and honorable under their parents' rapt and loving attention. Rakhan was almost afraid to blink, as if all of it might vanish away.

But no, he told himself. It was no longer a dream. It was his life, and his life was sweet and fair.

"What will we call him?" Eolina asked drowsily.

"I know his name," Rakhan murmured. "Aanash."

"Aanash," Eolina repeated, trying the word on her tongue. "What does it mean?"

Rakhan reached over her, smoothing his son's coarse dark hair. He put his fingers to his lips, then pressed the kiss to his free son's brow. "Aanash. It means: dawn."

-The End-

_For anyone interested in reading more about Rakhan, he will be appearing as a minor character—an officer in Saruman's army-in my next story, _Prisoners of Isengard.


End file.
